Gold, Guns, and God

While Western powers fret about coups in Niger and coups in Mali and coups in Burkina Faso, Russia is quietly doing something far more consequential: building a system.

Not just a colony and certainly not a friendship. But what is it?

It’s a system stitched together with mercenaries and minerals, but also with messaging—powerful stories of anti-colonial solidarity, moral righteousness, and multipolar rebellion.

Russia, as Victoria Clement so crisply lays out in her MES Insights article, is not in Africa to help. It is in Africa to win.

And with help from a sweeping RAND report published in 2025, we can finally see just how intricate this project really is.

This is a story about how Russia reinserted itself into Africa—not just as a military actor, but as a narrative power. It’s a story of disinformation in the service of extraction.

A story about why traditional values and traditional mining rights now often come bundled together.

And most of all, it’s a story about how great powers don’t need to be rich to be relevant—they just need to be strategic.

Once Upon a Time in the Cold War

We can start where Clement starts: with the Cold War.

The Soviet Union, that old ideological export machine, once had deep roots in Africa.

It trained students, supported "liberation" movements, opened embassies, and tried to present itself as the anti-colonial counterweight to the West.

But when the USSR collapsed, all that infrastructure—diplomatic, cultural, ideological—was mothballed or sold for parts.

By the early 1990s, Russia was gone. It closed embassies across the continent. It stopped training African elites.

And in the vacuum left behind, the U.S., France, China, and the IMF swooped in with loans, troops, and economic blueprints.

But by the mid-1990s, a countermovement stirred in Moscow. The KGB structures acted.

Enter Yevgeny Primakov, former spymaster turned foreign minister, who rejected the idea of playing second fiddle to the U.S.

He argued for a multipolar world where Russia, China, India, and the Global South could rewrite the rules.

Primakov died in 2015 but his doctrine lived on. And Vladimir Putin made it national strategy.

Three M’s: Mercenaries, Minerals, and Morality

Victoria Clement frames Russia’s modern play in Africa around three instruments: mercenaries, minerals, and morality.

Let’s take each in turn—and then let’s look at the stories Russia tells to tie them together.

Mercenaries: The Guns-for-Gold Trade

Russia's most visible tool of influence is also its most deniable. The Wagner Group, technically a private military company but operationally a state actor, has inserted itself into conflict zones where Western forces have pulled back.

In Mali, CAR, Sudan, Libya, and now Burkina Faso and Niger, Wagner operatives provide security in exchange for concessions—usually in the form of mineral rights.

When Prigozhin, Wagner’s founder, briefly turned on the Kremlin in 2023 and then died in a not-so-shocking plane crash, the operation rebranded as the Africa Corps, now reporting directly to the Russian Defense Ministry.

So what started as plausible deniability is now state doctrine.

The Kremlin has dropped the mask.

In place of long-term infrastructure investments, Russia offers regime survival in exchange for access to wealth.

It’s protection racket diplomacy—and it works.

Minerals: Africa’s Extraction Economy Gets a New Player

Russia's interest isn’t altruistic—it’s mineralogical.

  • Guinea supplies up to a third of the bauxite needed by Russia’s aluminum industry.
  • Sudan’s gold is laundered through the UAE and fuels Russia’s war economy.
  • Madagascar and Namibia? Uranium.
  • Zimbabwe, Liberia, CAR? Platinum, iron ore, and more gold.

Russia’s model is simple: support unstable regimes with arms and advisors in exchange for mining access.

It's neocolonialism dressed as anti-colonial liberation.

And unlike China, which builds roads and hospitals, Russia offers bullets and bodyguards.

Morality: The Gospel of “Traditional Values”

Here’s where things get strange—because alongside the AKs and gold contracts comes a message of moral salvation.

Russia, through both its state apparatus and the Russian Orthodox Church, is exporting a cultural narrative: we’re the ones who respect your values, not those decadent Westerners.

Patriarch Kirill, head of the ROC, even addressed the 2023 Russia-Africa Summit. His message: Russia and Africa are bound by tradition, family, and godliness.

Underneath that incense cloud lies a stark anti-Western pitch: reject LGBTQ+ rights, feminism, liberalism, and secularism.

In return, receive support, recognition, and a few arms shipments.

The church now operates in 25 African countries and it's not just preaching. It’s helping legitimize Russia’s presence as a moral counterweight to the West.

The Invisible Front: Information Warfare in Africa

This is where the RAND report steps in to complete the picture.

While Clement gives us the view on the ground—mercs, mines, and liturgies—RAND shows us the invisible infrastructure behind it all.

Russia isn’t just using bullets. It’s using bytes.

In RAND’s analysis, Russia’s strategy includes:

  • Discrediting the West by portraying it as manipulative, racist, and morally bankrupt.
  • Casting itself as a liberator—the heir to anti-colonial struggles.
  • Promoting disinformation around events like COVID, elections, and the Ukraine war.
  • Amplifying local grievances to weaken trust in African democracies and their Western partners.

Examples?

Russia's state media launched Sputnik Afrique to broadcast its narratives in French-speaking countries.

On social media, it deploys bots, influencers, and paid journalists to echo Kremlin talking points.

It even weaponizes history—referencing past European colonial atrocities while presenting itself as a humble, respectful partner.

And unlike the West, Russia doesn’t care about messy rules like fact-checking or journalism ethics. Its aim is to sow doubt, not build consensus.

Why Africa? Why Now?

Because Africa is winnable. It’s not locked into NATO. It’s not saturated with Western soft power the way Europe is. And it’s resource-rich.

More importantly, as RAND notes, African nations hold 54 votes in the UN General Assembly.

That’s 54 opportunities for Russia to block sanctions, undermine Western legitimacy, and gather support for its “multipolar world” vision.

The continent is also ground zero for disengagement from the West.

As France pulls troops out of the Sahel and U.S. credibility continues to wobble, Russia is filling the void—not with better governance, but with faster deals.

The System Russia is Building

Let’s be clear: this is not some improvisational scramble. Russia’s influence campaign is deliberate, layered, and adaptive. It combines:

  • Hard power (mercenaries and weapons)
  • Economic influence (mining contracts and military assistance)
  • Cultural power (Orthodox Church, anti-liberal narratives)
  • Information operations (disinformation, propaganda, bot armies)

This isn’t just diplomacy. It’s hybrid warfare with an African accent.

What Russia is constructing is a loyalty machine: support for Russia in exchange for regime security, international cover, and moral camaraderie.

And because it’s cheaper than building infrastructure or investing in education, it’s sustainable—at least in the short term.

The Real Disinformation Is the Idea That This Is All “Influence”

Call it what it is: strategic extraction wrapped in a velvet cloak of moralism.

Russia isn’t influencing Africa; it’s entrenching itself.

And the tragedy is that many African citizens, especially those tired of broken promises from the West, see in Russia something refreshingly transactional.

It’s honest about its cynicism. It doesn't pretend to care about governance—it just offers results.

In that way, Russia has outflanked the West—not with money or military strength, but with narrative clarity.

And in global politics, clarity sells.

Conclusion: This Is the Test

Clement warned us: “Russia is not in Africa to help Africa.”

RAND shows us what that “help” actually looks like—manipulation, mythmaking, mineral theft, and mercenary deployment.

But this isn’t just a Russia problem. It’s a wake-up call for anyone who still thinks Africa is peripheral to world politics.

It isn’t.

Africa is where the 21st century’s power contests are being staged—in embassies, on TikTok, in churches, and yes, in the mines.

Russia knows it, China knows it. The question is: does the West?

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