The St Petersburg Summit

The second summit between Russia and 49 of Africa's 54 countries, which took place in St. Petersburg on 27-28 July, marked a new turn in the Kremlin's foreign policy in the new global architecture. Contrary to Western media reports, African countries are increasingly shaking off the colonial clutches of the US and European powers and strengthening diplomatic relations and economic, military and geostrategic cooperation with China and Russia.

The Kremlin, in addition to its economic and geostrategic alliances with the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation countries: China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia. It also has strategic plans to strengthen its relations with the countries of the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council, the 54 African economies and several Latin American countries.

Putin's regime is restoring the Kremlin's role as a major player in global politics as it was after World War II and during the Cold War. A regime that seeks, as the world's leading nuclear and energy power, to regain some of the global preponderance it lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The first summit with African countries held four years ago in the Russian city of Sochi on the shores of the Black Sea, attended by 43 of Africa's 54 countries, was a key step in Moscow's new landing in Africa. At that summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to write off $23 billion of African countries' debts to Russia, most of it owed to Algeria, Angola, Libya, Mozambique and Ethiopia. Between 2000 and 2003, he wrote off part of the debts owed by Benin, Zambia, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, Equatorial Guinea and other African countries.

Moscow's new landing in Africa has clear goals to expand its influence as the third actor in international politics in the 21st century. Russia's new foreign policy is not based on the ideological expansion of the Stalinist socialism of the former Soviet Union, but on other imperialist political interests as an agricultural, nuclear, technological and energy power. The aim is to consolidate areas of economic and strategic influence beyond Eastern Europe and Asia, in this case in Africa.

At the St. Petersburg summit Putin noted that "relations with African countries are aimed at building partnerships of cooperation and mutual respect. Russia and African countries unite for the formation of a just and multipolar world order, based on principles of sovereign equality and respect for the rights of peoples to determine their own destiny.

The central theme of the summit was the food security of African countries, but African leaders are not limiting their relations with the Russians only to grain, fertiliser and arms supplies, but to new cooperation agreements on technology transfer for the development of agriculture, modernisation of the food industry, industrial mining and energy processes, and the development of rail, road and port infrastructure networks and the construction of nuclear power plants.

Experts estimate that 60 per cent of Africa's fertile land is under-utilised. Indeed, the Summit discussed how Russia can help Africa develop agriculture and the food industry to transform Africans into major food producers in the world. Likewise, how the Russians help with technology transfer to modernise mining and energy production in African nations.

By 2022, Russian exports to African countries amounted to $20 billion and military cooperation agreements worth more than $14 billion had been signed. Statistics show that trade has grown by 35% this year.

What is interesting now is that African leaders seek to act independently and not as vassals of the Americans and Europeans in the new global architecture. Hence the importance they see in China and Russia as partners whose foreign policies are not geared towards influencing the internal political affairs of countries by imposing economic and political prescriptions. China and Russia are on the back foot of the new neo-colonial division of Africa in order to control a market of 1.4 billion consumers and the 30% of the world's mineral and energy wealth that Africans possess.

@j15mosquera