African wars are paying for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, at least indirectly. When Vladimir Putin was running low on manpower and money in October last year, he turned to Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner group for more of both. Wagner have had troops in the Donbas region as far back as 2014, though in limited numbers. Now the Wagner group is providing thousands of troops throughout occupied Ukraine and funding the Russian army with its spoils from Africa. That though is creating a cashflow crisis for Prigozhin whose income is primarily from African gold and diamonds.
Wagner’s problem, and thus Putin’s, is that a conventional land war in Ukraine costs more than a handful of counter-insurgency wars in Africa.
Wagner makes its money by hiring itself out to African leaders who are fighting jihadis, rebels and other insurgents. In the dysfunctional, war-ravaged Central African Republic, President Faustin-Archange Touadéra hired Wagner to protect him from rebel groups who’ve torn the small country to shreds, and to keep the rebels out of the capital Bangui. Wagner mainly ‘defend’ the country’s gold mines while robbing the CAR’s treasury of much needed revenue. The group has also been accused of dealing in so-called blood diamonds that still pour through the region.
There are possibly as many as 1,000 Wagner operatives in the CAR and they continue to suffer heavy casualties in the conflict between Touadéra and the rebels seeking control over the gold mines. It’s chaos – and the few observers able to report say Wagner troops have been accused of rape, the massacre of innocents, and, of course, alcohol-fuelled human rights abuses like torture. They haven’t defeated the rebels, though there is an offensive underway in an attempt to move the frontline further from Bangui.
Further north, the United Nations has called for an investigation into a massacre in Mali in which Wagner is said to have taken part. ‘We are particularly worried by credible reports that over the course of several days in late March 2022, Malian armed forces accompanied by military personnel believed to belong to the Wagner Group, executed several hundred people, who had been rounded up in Moura, a village in central Mali,’ the UN said on January 31.
The massacre happened after the Malian junta leader Assimi Goita fell out with France last year, evicting French and other western troops battling Islamist terror groups linked to Isis and al-Qaeda. The Wagner group was happy to step in. Mali is Africa’s fourth-largest gold producer, with reserves of about 881 metric tons in 2022, according to its own mining ministry. Malian law has been changed to allow Wagner to exploit three gold mines, the French General Laurent Michon told Agence France Presse in July last year.
The mercenary group is also courting the Burkina Faso regime and will likely send men to the landlocked nation where Jihadists control almost half of all the county’s territory. Burkina Faso’s coup leader Captain Ibrahim Traoré has, like his Malian counterpart, recently expelled the French. Burkina Faso produces about 70 tons of gold a year, and already has a licenced Russian gold miner operating in the country, Norgold, making it a perfect client for Wagner.
Before the Ukraine crisis, Wagner obtained a licence to help Mozambican troops fight Ansar al-Sunnah, an Islamist terror movement that claims affiliation with Isis (though Southern African intelligence agencies say the group’s connection with Islamic State is tenuous). Primarily Ansar al-Sunnah are bandits in a lawless province of a lawless country. The war is being fought in Mozambique’s northernmost Cabo Delgado province, close to a region where $20 billion has been invested in gas by western companies like France’s TotalEnergies SA. It’s also close to the world’s biggest ruby mine, Gemfields-owned Montepuez.
The Mozambican contract ended abruptly when Mozambican authorities asked a retired Zimbabwean colonel to forcibly evict the mercenaries. Wagner’s men, they said, were almost perpetually drunk in beachside barraca bars, eating prawns and downing 2M beer. They were ill-trained and badly equipped and often refused to fight.
Wagner’s problem, and thus Putin’s, is that a conventional land war in Ukraine costs more than a handful of counter-insurgency wars in Africa. With sanctions on Russia, moving gold is easier than moving money, but intelligence agencies watching Wagner’s African operations say the mercenaries aren’t getting the gold they need for a protracted Ukrainian war. They’ll need more, which is why Wagner is flirting with Burkina Faso and why Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov is jetting between African states on a charm offensive ahead of the Africa-Russia Summit planned for June this year in St Petersburg. Prigozhin is rich, but nowhere near among the world’s super-rich and his pockets aren’t deep enough to finance full-scale war.
The problem for the EU, and Britain, is that they can’t take the lead in stopping Russia’s mercenaries. Neither the notoriously toothless African Union, nor Africa’s regional organisations, will overtly side with the West against Russia – or China. The reasons are more complicated than they seem, but essentially much of Africa feels beholden to Russia and China for their support half a century ago when the Cold War gripped Africa in a vice and Soviet Russia won friends by supporting Southern African liberation movements with training and armour. For the same reason, it feels it can’t be seen to publicly support western nations who were former colonial powers.
What happens in private is another matter, but it’ll likely take another half century before Africa and the west hold hands in public. For now they must conduct their relationship in secret, ducking and diving in the dark.
Further complicating matters is the fact that Russia’s African goals don’t align with China’s, and China is the far bigger threat. Russia is in Africa for short-term financial gain because it needs to feed the twin beasts of oligarchy and war. China is there for the long haul and wants to manipulate African governments through debt and obligation. It wants to control commodity markets, not simply trade on them. China seeks monopolies where Russia seeks quick gains.
Russia doesn’t hang around. It takes what it wants and leaves. And in its rush to fund the increasingly costly war in Ukraine, the Wagner group are leaving a trail of destruction behind in Africa.
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