Roughly $28bn. That was the size of Russia’s trade with Africa in 2025, a figure that lays bare the gap between Moscow’s political ambitions on the continent and its actual economic weight. China exchanged $348bn with African markets over the same period, while the European Union traded nearly 355 billion euros ($395bn) in goods with the continent in 2024. As African delegations gather in Moscow for the latest Russia-Africa Summit, the numbers frame the central question for investors and market watchers: what, exactly, is Russia selling?
The Kremlin expects delegations from 48 countries this year, including 22 heads of state. That is a recovery from the 2023 summit in St Petersburg, held after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when only 17 heads of state attended. The inaugural summit in Sochi in 2019 drew 43 African heads of state or government. In St Petersburg, Putin offered free grain to six African countries, which Russia later delivered.
“The economic incentives to go for the Russia summit are much more limited,” says Beverly Ochieng, a Dakar-based analyst. Compared with United States-Africa and China-Africa summits, she notes, Moscow puts fewer large investment commitments on the table. “The political incentives for attending are the primary reasons why these countries are there.”
What commercial offers do exist tend to follow a security-for-access model. For the military governments of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, the political product is immediate: support to remain in power. France was pushed out and Russia stepped in, yet armed groups continue to attack, and Human Rights Watch has accused Africa Corps forces in Mali of killing civilians and torturing detainees. Wagner’s founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is dead; in the Sahel, his outfit has given way to Africa Corps, controlled by Russia’s Ministry of Defence. Moscow is also fighting a war in Ukraine, where Africans have been recruited, some under false pretences. An investigation by Journalists for Justice documented 502 African deaths by June 2026.
Still, commercial footholds are emerging, and they point to where Moscow sees returns. In Mali, construction has begun on a gold refinery backed by Russia’s Yadran Group, with the Malian state holding a 62-percent stake. In Guinea, Russian aluminium giant Rusal operates bauxite mines and an alumina plant. In Niger, Rosatom subsidiaries are discussing uranium projects with the government after the takeover of a mine formerly operated by France’s Orano; a separate attempt to sell existing uranium stockpiles remains in dispute. These projects are modest by continental standards, but the pattern is clear: mining, metals and energy inputs that feed Russian industry.
Sanctions shape the offer as much as opportunity does. Facing Western restrictions, Moscow is hunting for economic openings through its relationships with African nations. Earlier this month, Putin said Russia’s aim was not to “steal something from Africa” but to “develop together”.
Legacy ties lower political barriers to market entry even where commercial ones remain high. The Soviet Union trained generations of African officers, politicians and students during decolonisation, and Ochieng, who learned Russian at the embassy in Kenya, says Moscow can still play the card of “we didn’t colonise you.”
Some analysts see a structural weakness in the military-centred business model. Sergey Eledinov, a former Russian officer and security analyst, argues that by securing governments, Moscow may hand them room to look elsewhere. “Survival doesn’t create loyalty,” he says. “It creates options.” For clients whose primary purchase is regime security, the supplier relationship is transactional, and alternatives, particularly Chinese and Western capital, remain larger and cheaper.
By contrast, Ochieng cautions against reading Russian flags at demonstrations as evidence of broad consumer or political demand. They do not mean “all Africans are just sitting around being pro-Russia,” she said. For Moscow, the summit is a chance to demonstrate continued “political relevance”, even as the West increasingly regards it as a pariah state.
The human cost of the security business surfaces far from the negotiating tables. In Douala, Cameroon, Mama Regina keeps her son Moses’s portrait on the wall; he went to Russia to fight, and like many families she is waiting for his body. In grief, some have turned to a small but growing Russian Orthodox church, whose Cameroonian pastor, trained in St Petersburg, says he is there to preach the “good news”.
The arithmetic, for now, favours Russia’s rivals. A $28bn trade relationship cannot compete with China’s or Europe’s on volume, and the gold refinery in Mali, Rusal’s Guinean operations and Rosatom’s uranium talks are targeted bets rather than broad investment programmes. What Russia offers Africa, the summit makes clear, is primarily political: security for fragile governments and a symbolic counterweight to Western influence, with the economic returns still to be proven.