Peskov: Russia's role in Africa shifts from "Santa Claus" to strategic cooperation

During an interview at SPIEF-2024 on RBC TV channel, Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary of the Russian President, highlighted that Russia cannot provide non-repayable loans to African nations as it did during the Soviet era.

Responding to a journalist's question about “whether Russia will not step on the same rake” as the USSR, which once handed out many non-repayable loans to African countries, Peskov emphasized that at that time there was a completely different system that could afford to hand out loans without consequences for the economy.

"We, we are not so rich, and we have a lot of problems to solve. And we probably shouldn't be such a kind Santa Claus. Here, perhaps, such philanthropy is hardly suitable. What is needed here is a new framework for cooperation. New frameworks based on mutual benefit, on mutual respect, based on the consideration of mutual concerns,” said the President's spokesman.

In the 1960s-70s, during the collapse of the colonial system in Africa, the USSR sponsored many states of the “black continent”. Especially close ties were established with the countries of the so-called socialist model of development (Guinea, Ghana, Republic of Congo, Mali, Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, Benin). Loans were granted to them both for the supply of arms and the construction of infrastructure facilities, including hydroelectric and thermal power plants, oil refineries, machine-building and metallurgical plants. In total, Soviet specialists participated in the creation of about 600 enterprises on the continent, of which more than 300 were operational by the end of the 1980s.

Nevertheless, many countries were never able to repay their loans to the USSR, and then to Russia. As a result, Putin, speaking at a plenary session of the Russia-Africa Economic Forum in 2020, announced the cancellation of $20 billion in debts to African countries. In July 2023, he specified that the total amount of debts of African countries cancelled by Russia is $23 billion.