Moscow Is Already Writing Our Future Without Asking Us

While African delegations were landing in Moscow in late October for the third Russia-Africa summit, another document was already circulating in the corridors of power. A draft. Thirty-seven pages. Two hundred and thirty-six points. An action plan for 2027 to 2029 that spells out, in black and white, how the Kremlin intends to entrench its influence on our continent for the next decade. And not one African capital was consulted in writing it.

Ask yourself what this silence means. When a partner drafts the agenda of our relationship in advance, that is not a partnership. It is a guardianship that refuses to call itself by name.

What the documents obtained by Jeune Afrique reveal is methodical. The plan covers a range of sectors that is anything but innocent: civil nuclear development, school construction, expanding the presence of Russian media on the continent, satellite projects. Taken one at a time, each point may look harmless. Put together, they sketch a complete architecture in which energy, education, information and space are gradually tied to Moscow. The text calls itself "non-binding." That is exactly where the trap lies. A document with no legal force does not need to have one: the real commitments are negotiated elsewhere, in bilateral agreements, mining concessions and security contracts, out of sight of parliaments and voters.

The plan also carries forward most of the objectives of the 2023-2026 programme. This continuity is an admission. Moscow is not rewriting its strategy because it failed, but because it succeeded well enough to want to extend it. The document makes clear, moreover, that the first beneficiary of these lines of cooperation is Russia itself. Contracts, markets, image dividends and diplomatic positions flow back to Moscow. African populations, for their part, receive promises and buildings.

We must also look at what the plan does not say, but what the ground tells us. In Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, the juntas traded their elections for Russian protection. Wagner, now rebranded as Africa Corps, has ruled there through terror dressed up as counterterrorism. In Moura, in March 2022, Malian soldiers and Wagner fighters executed hundreds of civilians, more than 500 according to Human Rights Watch. Entire villages were combed through, families erased from the map. That is what "security" means when it is sold by a partner who answers to no one.

In the Central African Republic, companies linked to the same network have secured rights to exploit gold and diamonds, while the country remains among the poorest on earth. In Sudan, journalistic investigations have documented the involvement of companies close to Wagner in gold extraction, in the middle of a civil war that has already driven millions onto the roads. Gold mines, corpses, displaced people: nowhere is the line between commerce and plunder to be found.

And let us not mistake the target. This is not only about Moscow. Chinese loans with opaque conditions, Emirati ports and investments, Turkish drones sold without any democratic condition, Gulf monarchies' money funding schools and mosques in exchange for political alignment: all of these actors are now carving up Africa the way the European powers divided it in Berlin in 1884. The tools have changed. The methods are the same. Extract, secure, indebt, control. We are watching new masters arrive, and very often it is our own leaders who open the doors for them.

Let us say it without detour: the West is not innocent of our misfortunes. For a long time it lectured us on democracy while propping up the despots it needed. But that reckoning has never been an excuse to accept a new guardian. The struggle we are waging is a struggle for universal principles: the sovereignty of peoples, transparency in contracts, respect for elections, freedom of the press. These principles do not change according to the nationality of the one who violates them.

So what is to be done? The answer begins with transparency, and it is simple. The African Union must demand full publication of every agreement concluded with Russia, without exception, including its military and mining components. Every African parliament must read, amend and ratify these commitments before they take effect. No security contract should be signed without parliamentary oversight, and no mining concession should be awarded without an open, audited tender.

Models exist, and they prove another path is possible. Botswana built its prosperity on solid institutions, regular elections and the management of its resources, diamonds above all, under public rules. Mauritius bet on the rule of law, free enterprise and political stability, and today posts one of the highest per-capita incomes on the continent. Senegal showed in 2024 that a peaceful alternation of power was possible even after severe tensions, when institutions hold and citizens refuse to give in. Ghana, too, saw a democratic alternation the same year. These are the proofs that sovereignty is built through rules, not through foreign sponsorship.

Civil society must play its role as a counterweight. Journalists, academics, lawyers and local entrepreneurs must demand publication of the contracts, expose opacity and support independent media, including those not funded by Moscow or Paris. The African private sector, for its part, must demand fair rules of the game: open public procurement, access to tenders for national companies, protection of property rights. A foreign investor who fears local competition is not a partner. He is a predator in a business suit.

And our citizens? They must demand accountability today, not after the next crisis. Ask your MP whether they have read the summit text. Ask your minister which agreements were signed in your name. Ask your government why the gold mines and the security contracts remain secret. Demand publication. Demand debate. Demand that decisions shaping your children's future be made in broad daylight.

Dear readers, let us not allow Moscow to write the 2027-2029 chapter of our history in our place. We have seen this film before, in the nineteenth century, with other actors and other flags. We cannot accept that it start again under the pretext of modernity. Africa is not a territory to be divided, nor a canvas to be painted according to the moods of foreign chancelleries. It is a continent of fifty-four nations and hundreds of millions of citizens who want to decide their own destiny. It is time to give it back to them.

Based on reporting by ACSS-EMAIL