MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti economic commentator Vasily Zubkov) - Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, relations with African countries were relegated to the bottom of Russian priorities.
Cooperation with fifty or so African nations seemed to be of little value for the new market economy. Does this belief still hold true today?
In the early 1990s, Russia's own economic problems forced it to leave Africa. The transition from inter-state to business-to-business relations in foreign trade did not lead to immediate positive results. By 2000, Russia's trade with African countries fell 3.5-fold from $2.7 billion in 1994.
As the economy recovered and businesses developed, interest in Africa began to return. In Russia, the government traditionally lobbies any large business projects abroad. President Vladimir Putin's recent visit to African countries, including sub-Saharan Africa (he is the first of Soviet and Russian leaders to have ventured there), gives hope that the trend has finally been reversed. So what is Africa's current place in Moscow's foreign economic relations?
According to customs statistics, the entire continent accounted for 1.5% (over $900 million) of Russia's foreign trade (except the CIS countries) in 2002. By comparison, China's trade with Africa amounts to tens of billions of dollars. Chinese leader Hu Jintao said the country had become the fastest growing export market for African nations. International experts believe that in recent years China has been pursuing deals in Africa in order to gain full control over the supply of such commodities as copper and oil.
Today, Russian-African trade amounts to $2 billion, which is less than 1% in the continent's $250 billion trade turnover. This figure may not be completely accurate, however, because Russian statistics do not take into account the fact that a significant amount of Russian products - trucks, tractors, machines and industrial equipment - is supplied via Europe and Dubai by intermediaries from France and Belgium or by Russian offshore firms. Nevertheless, comparison with other developed countries clearly shows how far Russia has fallen behind in its trade with Africa: French-African trade turnover, for example, amounted to $26.6 billion in 1999.
This is a huge difference. Perhaps, Alexei Vasilyev, director of the Institute of African Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, was referring to this state of affairs when he described the last ten years of Russian-African cooperation as a decade of "lost opportunities".
It is also important to bear in mind some specific features of trade with Africa that have become prominent in the last 15 years. Vladimir Lopatov of the Institute of African Studies says that there is a stable trend of Russian exports prevailing over African imports. This testifies to African consumers' interest in Russian products. And, unlike the West, they are interested not only in commodities.
Moreover, while imports from industrialized countries are to a large extent aggressive, as they block the development of domestic industry and agriculture, purchases of commodities and products of tropical and subtropical agriculture in Africa serve to cover the shortage that cannot be bridged by home production.
It is also important that Russia, which acts as an energy and commodities supplier for the West, has traditionally supplied technologies to Africa. These are energy and construction equipment, trucks, tractors, machines, and modern weapons. Every dollar invested in Africa yields much bigger profits than investment in Asia and Latin America, to say nothing of developed countries. Hence the surge of foreign investment in the African economies.
President Putin's promise that Russian businesses will invest billions of dollars in African economies proves that Russia has serious plans about the continent.
At a meeting with ambassadors last June, President Putin said that the end of the Cold War had eliminated the previous division of Africa into east and west, opening up the entire continent to cooperation with Moscow. Russia did not have to start from scratch in rebuilding its economic relations with African countries. The Soviet Union built over 300 major economic facilities in Africa and trained tens of thousands of qualified specialists. In addition, in 1998-2004 Russia wrote off $14 billion of Africa's debt and gave trade preferences to 50 African nations. Africa appreciates it and knows that it needs Russia as much as Russia needs Africa.
