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

100,000 students from almost every state in Africa have attended
Chinese universities. The number of governmental scholarships has
doubled between 2006 and 2009 to come to 4,000 students. In 2009
alone, over 12,000 African students were studying in China. Contacts
and cooperation between the governments in such fields as culture,
education, science and technology and tourism have also been
expanded, providing intellectual motivation and cultural support for
China-Africa cooperation 52 ;
– generating revenues/hard currency and opening new markets
for rival’s products.
The general conclusion that stems from this analysis is that the
competition between the “old” and “new” actors on the African economic
playground will increase in the coming decades. The rivalry
will primarily develop and intensify in the primary commodities
sector. Gradually, this sector will be saturated and the external players
will turn to other sectors, sub-sectors, branches and industries.
This cooperation in the value-added sectors will be used as a bargaining
tool to achieve better terms of access to the much desired
natural resources and raw materials.
In the New Millennium, Russia is neither a totally “new”, nor an
“old” player on the African continent. The old Soviet heritage, especially
in the sphere of political support and sometimes unparalleled
altruism, staunch anti-colonial stance and massive assistance in
1960s–1970s to the creation of national economies form a very positive
environment for a possible reactivation of the nation’s positions
on the continent and bilateral relations with African countries. This
opens for the Russian Federation a unique window of opportunity in
the next ten to twelve years. On the other hand obvious stumbling
blocks like the reduced economic potential, domestic problems, opportunism
and profit-seeking of the bureaucracies may prove to become
unsurpassable and would not allow the country to occupy a
worthy place among the Africa’s privileged partners.
The existing threats and challenges can be successfully tackled
only by exercising a strategy, bases on a well elaborated system of
measures and steps, which rely on three pillars:
1) Genuine mutually beneficial interaction;
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