When Evariste Ndayishimiye lands in Moscow this week, he arrives wearing two hats: president of a small Central African nation and chairman of the African Union, the continent’s chief convener. His job as co-chair of the third Russia-Africa summit, which opens Wednesday, puts the Burundian leader at the center of a gathering Russian President Vladimir Putin hopes will demonstrate that Western attempts to isolate Moscow over the war in Ukraine have limits.
Delegations from 48 countries are expected, with 22 sending heads of state, according to state media. Among the leaders due in the Russian capital are Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, Kenyan President William Ruto and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Putin plans a series of bilateral meetings with his visitors and will join the summit’s plenary session on Thursday, the Kremlin said. Participants intend to adopt a joint declaration and a separate communique on artificial intelligence, alongside other agreements.
For the leaders making the trip, the calculus is often pragmatic rather than ideological. “Africans are well aware of Russia’s relatively modest position on the continent and of the much stronger presence of China, the West and even India,” said Alexander Baunov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “For African countries, ties with Russia are a way of somewhat balancing that much larger presence.”
Meanwhile, that balancing act carries complications for ordinary Africans. The summit opens as several African governments have complained about efforts to recruit their citizens to fight in Russia’s war in Ukraine, a potential source of friction at the talks. In the restive Sahel, where Russia has made some of its most visible advances by providing military support to governments in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, and in the Central African Republic, where it has maintained a military presence, the consequences of Moscow’s growing security role land hardest on the people who live there.
Russia’s courtship of the continent extends well beyond this week’s gathering. Moscow has been rebuilding diplomatic and cultural infrastructure dismantled after the Soviet collapse, reopening embassies and expanding scholarships, university partnerships and training programs. It has resumed missions in Burkina Faso, Niger, Equatorial Guinea, Sierra Leone and Togo in recent years, established its first embassies in South Sudan, the Gambia and Comoros, and plans another in Liberia, according to Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
The push has a family dimension too. Putin’s daughter, Katerina Tikhonova, is involved through her Innopraktika foundation, which alongside state-owned lender Promsvyazbank announced a permanent Russia-Africa organization intended to help Russian companies on the continent. In March, Innopraktika took part in launching a Russian technology hub in Dar es Salaam that aims to turn Tanzania into an entry point into the East African market for Russian technology firms.
Yet the economic reality behind the diplomatic fanfare remains modest. Russia’s trade with Africa was approaching $30 billion a year as of June, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, less than Russia’s annual total with neighboring Belarus, a nation of fewer than 10 million people, and a fraction of the almost €355 billion ($396 billion) in goods exchanged between the European Union and Africa in 2024, according to European Council data. “Seventy percent of this trade is concentrated in seven or eight countries,” Lavrov said in an interview last year. “Diversification is needed here.”
There have been pockets of rapid growth. Trade with Ghana rose to more than $800 million in 2024 from $247 million in 2022, according to the Russian embassy in Ghana. But a report by the Center for Africa Studies at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, which advises the government on regional policy, found that Russian exporters are reluctant to invest significantly because of a shortage of prepared projects and reliable information on costs, markets, regulations and risks.
Moscow remains a top arms supplier to Africa, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, though its position has weakened as deliveries to Algeria, historically one of its largest customers, have dropped sharply in recent years.
For Baunov, the gap between rhetoric and reality is the key to reading the summit. “Over the years, it has become clear that Russia’s verbal support and anti-imperialist rhetoric translate very poorly into actual financial resources,” he said. “One should not mistake an interest in Russia, or attendance at its events, for unconditional support for Russia.” More detail on the summit is available at https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news-fast-news/putin-courts-africa-leaders-at-moscow-summit/.
Whether this week’s handshakes translate into anything concrete for the continent’s residents, beyond the Sahel’s already disrupted daily life, remains the open question hanging over Moscow.
© 2026 Bloomberg