The Tsar’s African circus by Robert Perez

Africa has never lacked visitors promising liberation, friendship and prosperity. It has lacked the luxury of believing them and the Kremlin is rolling out its familiar propaganda carpet: Russia as the trustworthy partner, the anti-colonial liberator, the misunderstood alternative to a hypocritical Western establishment. Africa, apparently, is expected to applaud.

Putin's African pitch is simple, seductive and deliberately dishonest. The West colonised Africa, exploited its resources, humiliated its populations and continues to lecture its governments about democracy, governance and human rights while conveniently forgetting its own historical crimes. Russia, by contrast, claims to offer partnership without moral conditions, political lectures or colonial baggage.

But this is precisely where the African political establishment should start asking uncomfortable questions. Russia is not an innocent historical spectator. The absence of a comparable African colonial empire does not magically transform Moscow into an international humanitarian organisation. Russian imperialism has its own bloody history, its own traditions of domination and its own contemporary appetite for territorial expansion. Ukraine is hardly an advertisement for respect towards sovereignty, independence or the right of nations to determine their own future.

And yet, Moscow understands something that Western capitals repeatedly fail to understand: resentment is political capital. For decades, Western governments treated Africa as a continent to be instructed rather than listened to, a collection of problems to be managed rather than societies with legitimate ambitions. Development assistance became entangled with political conditionality, commercial exploitation continued behind respectable diplomatic language, and European governments occasionally discovered their humanitarian conscience only when African resources became strategically inconvenient.

Putin exploits that arrogance with considerable calculation. Russia's expanding African influence is not simply a diplomatic curiosity. It is a strategic investment in governments, military relationships, security arrangements, mineral concessions and political alliances. Moscow seeks votes in international institutions, access to resources, opportunities to weaken Western influence and the prestige of appearing indispensable in a multipolar world. Its security relationships and mercenary networks have also demonstrated how easily the language of sovereignty can become a convenient cover for dependency.

The uncomfortable truth is that African governments are not necessarily innocent passengers in this arrangement. Some actively welcome Russian involvement because it offers weapons, political protection and fewer uncomfortable questions about authoritarianism. Others see Moscow as leverage against Western partners. That is understandable realpolitik, but it is not automatically liberation.

Africa deserves better than choosing between Western paternalism and Russian opportunism. The continent is not a geopolitical orphan waiting for a powerful uncle in Washington, Brussels or Moscow. Its population, resources, economic potential and diplomatic weight should make it an independent force rather than a bargaining chip in somebody else's imperial nostalgia.

The real question is not whether Russia is more reliable than the West. Both have interests, and neither should be confused with charity.

The question is whether African leaders can transform competing foreign ambitions into genuine African advantages, without selling their independence to the highest bidder.

Putin may arrive in Moscow with the language of anti-colonial solidarity, but beneath the diplomatic smiles lies an old imperial instinct wearing a new ideological costume. The Tsar has discovered Africa. Africa should make certain that the Tsar does not discover its throne.