L. Fituni, I. Abramova Resource Potential of Africa and Russia's ...

In was only in the first decade of the new Millennium that Moscow
started to resuscitate the old economic and political links. There
is still much argument about what was the real cause for the unexpected
revival of interest. Was it a self-confident stride und successes
of Beijing there, which by that time began to assume the role
model for the Kremlin – the role of a de facto leader of the BRIC
countries? Or, on the contrary, was it a result of a brief “love affair”
between Moscow and London at the times of preparations for G-8
meetings in Saint-Petersburg and Gleneagles?
No matter, what was the cause, too much time and too may positions
have been lost. In 2010, Russia’s trade turnover with Africa
was about 2 billion US dollars, whereas in 1989 (not the best year to
compare with, but the last for which we have reliable foreign trade
statistics) it was nearly 3.4 billion USD. The data are in current
prices. That means that the figure of 2 billion refers to inflated contemporary
US currency, while the purchasing power of the dollar
twenty years ago was much higher. In fact, 3.4 billion USD in 1989
(domestic US) prices are equal to 5.8 billion USD in 2009 prices.
For comparison, the current volume of the Chinese turnover (excluding
Hong Kong) with Africa is 10 times higher than the Russian
one.
We have to acknowledge that the shortsightedness of some Soviet
and post-Soviet politicians resulted in an unprecedented loss of
achieved gains of the Soviet-African economic cooperation, the cooperation,
which had been mutually beneficial and which, unfortunately,
is still surrounded with huge amounts of myths, lies, and
prejudice. Therefore, having considered the current shortage of factual
information on non-ideological aspects of Soviet-African relations,
we found it expedient to review that cooperation in more detail.
This analysis would allow us to see clearly what has been lost
or squandered irreversibly, and where the last crumbs remain that
can still be used at the current stage of Russian-African cooperation.
Before the Second World War economic relations between Africa
and the USSR were hardly existent. That does not mean that
African commodities never reached the Soviet market in those
years. In fact, a stable inflow of such African products as cocoa,
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