Andrey Maslov spoke at the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy’s Lecture “Where is Africa Going? And with whom?”

On September 11, 2023, the first Council for Foreign and Defense Policy’s Lecture took place at the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs of the HSE University. The experts discussed Russian-African relations in the context of increasing the “agency” of Africa. The event was attended by Denis Degterev, Professor of the School of International Affairs at the HSE University, Maya Nikolskaya, researcher at the Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at the MGIMO University, and Andrey Maslov, Director of the HSE’s Center for African Studies. The discussion was moderated by Fyodor Lukyanov, Chairman of the Council’s Presidium and editor-in-chief of the “Russia in Global Affairs” Journal.

Fyodor Lukyanov, Denis Degterev, Maya Nikolskaya, Andrey Maslov

HSE University

Fyodor Lukyanov: This is our first lecture after the summer break. There are lots of events, of course, but somehow it turns out that all last summer was spent in world politics with the active African participation. In one way or another, in various forms: from elections and coups, to some non-state actors, with whom there were some events not directly related to Africa, but affecting it.

We scheduled the lecture for Monday, and on Saturday there was another news: the African Union was officially invited to participate in the G20. It is now a “group of twenty-one”. It's a number that brings up a lot of nice thoughts. By doing so, it means that Africa, as a single entity, has been recognized at the highest international level. Apart from Africa, as we know, the twentieth member is the European Union. A few years ago, if someone had said that the African and European Unions would have equal international status, at least formally, it would have caused very great surprise. But now we see that it is already happening.

Today we have invited our good friends, wonderful Africanists, to organize a lecture for me as for a person who is far from this issue. Only six months ago, for Russian internationalists, Africa was certainly presented in our world, but in a rather limited way, as a kind of exoticism. But now it seems that for a number of reasons it is almost the most important direction, but not only. A few years ago some events there would not have attracted so much global interest, but now they are becoming the number one news story, just as it was in the summer with the coup in Niger.

All those sitting here know Africa like the back of one’s hand. Let's start with a quiz. The first question is quite simple. Why do we even need Africa right now?

 

Africa is a prospective market for Russian technologies

Denis Degterev: Since we are at the HSE University, I will say “for the economy”. It might seem as a paradox, but we need Africa for our technological development.

Fyodor Lukyanov: This is surprising.

Denis Degterev: The point is that we realize that our technologies are unlikely to be in demand in Western Europe and the United States, including because there is a gap between Western and non-Western economies (the so-called decoupling). Many of our technologies are unlikely to be in demand in China as well. A number of niches are available to a greater extent, probably in Turkey and India. This is, for example, nuclear power, and so on. In this respect, the Middle East and, especially, Africa are an opportunity for Russian companies to develop in the field of high technologies. There are fixed costs and there are variable costs. It’s impossible to recoup fixed costs from the Russian market alone. What other markets are there? We are practically coming to the conclusion that it is Africa, with no options.

Another thing is on what terms we will work with Africa. This is where the options begin. It is clear that there are countries with an above-average income level, with a high income level. Of course, North Africa provides a lot of market conditions. There are non-wealthy, least developed countries. According to the UN classification, most of such countries are in Africa. With part of them, we are talking about grant aid. But, again, this should be sovereign aid, when Russia chooses which countries to help and why to help. Now several countries in Africa are being assisted on this basis at once.

Most of it is, of course, about entering into offset deals and mutually beneficial cooperation, which will allow our technology companies to develop. There are already some examples, such as Rosatom. By the way, a good example is Yandex. Will someone say that Yandex is not a technology company? Yandex does not exist in the USA or China, but it does exist in Africa under the brand name Yango. This is such an unexpected answer to your question.

Fyodor Lukyanov: Good. That was a great Maya, now you tell us why we need Africa.

Africa is a continent of passionate and talented people

Maya Nikolskaya: I will probably answer less freshly, but mainstream and, most importantly, honestly. Indeed, Africa has become much more important in world politics, what you said. It is now on everyone's lips. It feels like all the world's media are only concerned with figuring out the ethnic composition of Niger, how it differs from Nigeria and so on. I think it's done [the media] a lot of good. Because the fixation on the West that they had is really a terrible blind spot, a framework that has long since rusted. This applies to the media, first of all.

We saw that African countries came out with their plan for a peaceful settlement of the Ukrainian conflict, six African countries - everyone was very surprised. Of course, it was very pleasant for them, because they came to the forefront of world politics, everyone immediately started talking about them. I've talked to a lot of Africans, including in academia, and strangely enough, they are doing it because they are afraid of nuclear war. Of all the civilizations that now exist on planet Earth, these are the people who are most afraid of death. That's the civilizational response, if you will.

Then, African countries and Russia have much more in common than we think at first glance. [...] Only 32 years have passed since the signing of the Bialowieza Accords. Russia is rebuilding its identity, trying to put itself back together after the Soviet era. The same thing is happening with African countries. They gained their independence in the 60s and 70s. Yes, it's a bit earlier, but we realize that by the standards of world history, it's about the same. We can even find some direct parallels in our history and in African history.

Among other things, Africa is a continent of extremely passionate and extremely talented people. This is what they also have in common with us. There are a lot of talented people in Russia. You need to create appropriate conditions for their realization, and they are eager to fight. There are simply more of them in Africa, mainly because there are more young people. [...] we all believe in true multipolarity, Russia and African countries. [...] The South African philosophy of Ubuntu is the idea of good neighborliness, the universal connectivity of space. Whatever you do in one region of the world, it is bound to go round in another. All those political initiatives that Africa has been undertaking lately, which in one way or another affect Russia and vice versa, fit into this concept. Let's assume that the word “Ubuntu” can be translated into Russian as “multipolarity”.

Fyodor Lukyanov: We should take it on board. A lot of revelations. If I had known that a nuclear war would break out, I would have invited a specialist, we have one at the faculty. Next time we'll definitely invite him. Andreн, in your recently published article you wrote that after a nuclear war in Africa, life will be preserved.

Africa is a market for food security

Andrey Maslov: Life will begin [...] You think that Africans look alike, but [in Africa] 90% of the genetic bank of mankind is concentrated. If there is some kind of epidemic or cataclysms, it is more likely that life will be preserved there. Once again, at least twice the settlement of the world from Africa has already taken place, with a high probability it will happen again.

Fyodor Lukyanov: But a nuclear war is not necessarily going to happen yet.

Andrey Maslov: It depends on the experts.

Fyodor Lukyanov: We are trying.

Andrey Maslov: We are.

Fyodor Lukyanov: Good. So why do we need Africa apart from that?

Andrey Maslov: I am sitting here wondering who “we” should be. Russia is very diverse. It is one of the most diverse countries in the world. We have space, agriculture, the digital economy, and banks. A little bit of everything, a little bit of everything. Each part of our economic complex with its political superstructure is trying to fit into the world economy, and each has its own Africa.

Africa has been feeding me for many years, I [definitely] need it. I agree with Denis, about high-tech companies. I just don't know, I don't think Yandex is a Russian company anymore.

First us ten years and several billion dollars. This influence should be consolidated, not to skim the cream off high prices, as our exporters, unfortunately, mostly do and rejoice. We need to get away from this. We need to realize that Russia should play a system-forming role in ensuring global food security for twenty, forty, sixty, and one hundred years, including because of warming. It is necessary to invest in infrastructure so that people do not starve and have access to food. odor Lukyanov: That's not true. They have split, there is a Russian one.

Andrey Maslov: This is good news, if it is true. It turns out that we have a paradigm shift. Fifteen years ago, we [in relation to Africa] talked about energy: to compete with Shell and Exxon, our companies must seize the resource base in Africa. That discourse c us ten years and several billion dollars.

[An example of] a false understanding of the challenges in Africa is [when] Gazprom should be looking for gas in Algeria. Why? How? - There was no explanation, and there still isn't. Why should Lukoil buy assets offshore in the Gulf of Guinea? A more realistic paradigm has now [prevailed]. If we take Russia as a whole, Russia is an exporter of food security. This is probably the main role, apart from the dream of high-tech leadership that we have.

Within the world majority, there is now a distribution of roles, we are definitely not with the West, but what will be our role in the East, to what extent will we play an independent role? It also depends on our position in Africa.

In fact, we are not confronting the West, but ourselves. We have to overcome [our weaknesses], to prove that we are worthy of leading the world's majority. Food security is something we can rely on. We export many kinds of food, primarily grain and all kinds of fertilizers. Cumulatively, no other country plays such a role in world food security, including for Africa. [Many countries] export certain types of fertilizers, the U.S. exports wheat and corn, India exports rice, but all together, no one else has such a role.

This influence should be consolidated, not to gain profits from the high prices, as our exporters, unfortunately, mostly do and enjoy doing. We need to get away from this. We need to realize that Russia should play a system-forming role in ensuring global food security for twenty, forty, sixty, and one hundred years, including because of warming. It is necessary to invest in infrastructure so that people do not starve and have access to food.

Africa is a new mirror for Russia

Andrey Maslov: [...] And Africa is the mirror into which we are looking. For five hundred years we have been looking at Europe and waiting for their assessment. We wanted to please them, we wanted to be like them, to surpass them in some way. Now we have a military operation going on. We realize that there will no longer be the same world, the same system as before. We will no longer be part of Europe. Africans give us a completely different perspective, an opportunity to see ourselves from the outside, to evaluate our actions in the foreign policy arena and in life in general, whether they are adequate. This external assessment that they give is very important. When I traveled to Africa, I asked Africans a lot about how they feel about what is happening, what we are doing, where they understand us, where is the line that should not be crossed, how we should properly explain our actions.

The last thing Africans are ready to be happy about is that somebody is strengthening their position there. Africa is strengthening its own positions [...]. There used to be such sentiments [in Russia] that we should fight the [former] colonizers with their weapons. [But, in fact,] we should, without interfering in the internal structure of Africa, contribute to its growth, development and settlement. Then we will have a bright future.

Fyodor Lukyanov: Good. The second question is about a bright future. The Valdai Club held a separate African conference before the Russia-Africa Forum, but two days before it.

There were mostly our African friends, very polite, who said good things about cooperation, Russia's role, and so on. But a colleague from South Africa also spoke, and he said that he generally agreed with everything, but that he would like to see a little more realism. He said that Africans should ask themselves the question: “What makes Russia better, what makes it different from everyone else?” We appreciate Russia, we remember the Soviet Union, its role, it is undeniable. But Russia is not the Soviet Union. And now we all live in a competitive environment. Yes, Africa needs to cooperate with Russia necessarily, just like with India, China, Europe, USA, Turkey and all the others. Why should Russia be given some special place and a special attitude. Why?

Russia is an alternative strategic dependency

Denis Degterev: Thank you for the question. I will probably continue with one or even several of Andrei Alexandrovich's thoughts. Colleagues have already said that Russia has a lot in common with Africa. I will say it in other words, in other terms. In terms of center-periphery relations. Africa has more negative experience of dependent development than we do. Continuing what Andrey Alexandrovich said, Africans perceive any external intervention with a certain distrust.... I recall the words of Kemi Seb, he is from Benin (I worked in Benin for three years). He said that France is drowning you, but Russia is giving you a helping hand. You can refuse that hand. Russia is an alternative strategic dependency.

Fyodor Lukyanov: Dependence exactly?

Denis Degterev: Africa still has dependent development. This is an alternative. [...] Africans teach that you should not be afraid of dependence as such, but you should be afraid of alternative-free dependence. When you have the opportunity to switch from one addiction to another, it is already a choice.

Thanks to Russia, Africans have the opportunity to choose. As Andrey Alexandrovich says, Russia needs to keep a balance as a provider of food, military, information and financial security. If the countries that work with Russia become stronger as sovereign states thanks to Russia, then, of course, from the point of view of building a multipolar world, this [will be] a big plus. Our goal is to have more sovereign states. We have the technology. Our technologies in combination are technologies to ensure security and sovereignty.

Maya Nikolskaya: I agree about the alternative, but we are not going to turn the discussions into an exclusive consensus, although that would be African. It seems to me that asking what we are better at is not quite correct. Some are better at one thing, some are better at another. That is the African position.

I came to the [Russia-Africa] forum, which was at the end of July, and talked to Africans who went to the science and technology section. They asked me, how are Russian technologies better? I said they are not better, but we occupy a certain niche. This is the right idea, and I agree with Andrei Alexandrovich that it is not necessary to be ahead of the world in all positions, we need to look for some specific cooperation projects.

What advantages does Russia have? First of all, there is the proverbial base - an excellent historical reputation. I realize that this thesis is a bit of a mouthful. I am sorry, but it is true. Moreover, relations with those states with which Russia is building them now are a greeting from those Soviet times. We were friends with the Modimbo Keita and Sekou Toure regimes. Those countries, Mali and Guinea remain in good contact with Russia.

What the Soviet Union did - now you can do version 2.0. What did the Soviet leadership do? They signed treaties, agreements, recognized these republics immediately after they gained independence from France, and began to build industries there: gold mining, cement factories. They were creating something for the long term. That's one track.

[...] When Picasso fell in love with a Russian ballerina, [his friend Jean Cocteau] said: “Darling, you must realize that you don't joke with Russians, you marry them.” We know it didn't end well. Picasso painted it in the most horrible cubist forms, but that's not so important. The thesis should be the other way around: Russians don't joke, they marry. It should be a long game.

The second track is crisis management. I worked at the embassy for a while. I can tell you that most of our diplomacy in terms of personnel, those people who work in Africa, are people who have dealt with crises in the former Soviet Union, who are skilled in these sudden somersaults in U.S.-Russian relations. They're not so good at building bricks. There's a game called Jenga, which is Swahili for “build.”

You have to differentiate here. For example, in countries where instability is high, like West Africa, you need good crisis management. But on demand only, again. This is the number one principle of any psychological help. A psychologist/psychotherapist only helps the person who has asked him/her to do so, no need to resort and impose.

We need long-term projects. We do not need to be the torrent that gives everything away for free. Africans are very practical, very subject-oriented. They understand the principle of benefit. A colleague of mine at the Institute of International Studies [MGIMO] wrote well in an article that for the first time Africa is in a situation where its heart is being won, not the other way around. It's a very beautiful metaphor, I like it, but I would shift the emphasis. Africa has found itself in a situation where its heart is being won rather than trying to use violence, to take it out of it, to siphon off all the resources it can give and give it nothing in return. Africa is now like Tsarevna Nesmeyana, to whom every ambassador should approach and explain what we are good at in a particular case.

Fyodor Lukyanov: Continuing the topic of who marries whom. Let's assume that we will prevail in our approach, that we are really for Africa, with all our heart. But based on what Maya said about pragmatism, they will not marry then. Why should they? They need more applicants.

Andrey Maslov: They will give away their youngest daughter.

Fyodor Lukyanov: Youngest daughter?

Russia needs heavily-populated Africa

Andrey Maslov: It is an African tradition... In general, it is difficult to speak after your colleagues. It's like at a birthday party, when you give the last toast, it's hard to add anything, everything has already been listed.

Even in small African countries, groups within the elite are formed that are oriented - one towards France, one towards the USA, one towards China. Maybe somewhere there will be one oriented towards Russia. Somewhere, for sure, there already is. We have to catch up here. They don't fight among themselves inside. There are conflicts there, but they take place along completely different lines. They cooperate normally among themselves. [...] one daughter was married there, the other one here. We need to be guided by one of the daughters. So that we are organically included in the architecture of foreign relations of each African country separately. [...] Not to forbid them to communicate with others - it is impossible, it is wrong. They don't like to have a choice imposed on them at all. Here we realize that this is the strength of our position in front of the West, because they like to impose. We do not need to copy this behavior, we need to change the very rules of the game.

Let's take a soccer match as an example. Who are you on the pitch? The defender, the goalkeeper, the coach, the manager of the soccer team? We need to be the people who come up with new rules of the game. We are not going to win that soccer game.

Fyodor Lukyanov: This is the FIFA commission, if we make an analogy. The referee does not invent rules, he fulfills the existing ones.

Maya Nikolskaya: We have to invent another soccer.

Andrey Maslov: And here is another reason why Africa needs Russia. The world is now growing alarmed about Africa's population explosion because it's a “threat to global security.” “Fertility should be limited, 2.5 billion is a lot, and 3 billion is the end altogether.” How will we live if every second person in the world is African?

Africans understand that the agenda that is being induced on Africa is related to the desire to limit the birth rate and canalize the migration of skilled personnel. Russia is hardly the only major player interested in Africa's population growth.

Take Congo, which is as large as the whole of Western Europe. When the Belgians left, 15 million people lived in the Congo. That's like Moscow now. Now there are 100 million people living in the Congo, but it's still not enough. On the same territory in Europe there are 300 million people.

But for some reason the Europeans say, “No, 300 million for you [will be] a lot.” This pole shift in the decision-making system is also due to the demographic factor. So the more Africans there are, the better it is for them, and the worse it is for the West.

Not to mention that the elementary problem of food security is solved by population densification. It will be easier to feed 3 billion Africans than 1 billion. This is proven mathematically. The consolidation of cities, the creation of markets, logistics, and the movement of goods over long distances are all paying off. This is the future that Russia needs, including as a global provider of food security. This is the point at which our interests coincide in the long term.

Anti- or post-colonialism?

Fyodor Lukyanov: Then one more question, which is connected with the ideological and propaganda situation in the world. Recently, the discourse of fighting neo-colonialism has become extremely popular. We hear it all the time now, literally lately it has become a little bit less frequent, and last year literally every speech of our President and Foreign Minister had a neo-colonial theme. I can assume, as an outsider, that, in principle, African comrades like this theme, as they say nowadays, are comfortable with it. Why not? I mean, they all came out of anti-colonial struggles.

On the other hand, I can assume that they are not completely naive people, they can guess why suddenly Russia is so concerned about the problems of the struggle against colonialism now, while before that, for quite a long time, it did not remember it very much. To what extent does this approach of ours meet with understanding in Africa right now?

Denis Degterev: Thank you very much. We are professionally engaged in anti-colonial issues. My colleagues and I at the Department [of Theory and History of International Relations] at PFUR have scanned all the Soviet books, more than sixty books - monographs on neocolonialism. You can type “Soviet studies of neocolonialism” on the Internet. Not only did we scan these sixty books, we read them. 90% of it is all up to date. There is surprisingly little propaganda in it, written by practicing people. The strongest studies of neocolonialism in the world were in the Soviet Union. You and I understand that there is a balance of power, and there is a balance of ideologies. There is always a struggle or what is called “moral geography” in the ideological space. In this respect, our anti-colonial discourse at the official level has not been bad in recent years.

But it is important to have it at the level and within the academic discourse. As they say, “Marxism is not a dogma...”, it must be constantly developed. In this regard, one of the few modern Russian works that can be recommended is the book edited by Leonid Fituni “Africa: Sanctions, Elites and Sovereign Development”. It's four hundred pages long. He bridges the gap between the negative aspects, some of which are sometimes not worth mentioning, and the fact that we are now saying that Russia is a security provider.

The discourse needs to evolve. In fact, we haven't really dealt with [anti-colonialism] at a serious academic level in the last thirty years. But it has been practiced in Europe. If you type “anti-colonialism / anti-colonial studies” somewhere on the Internet today, what do you come across? It's a post-colonial discourse. That is, anti-colonial discourse as such has all but disappeared. It is precisely postcolonial discourse. It's a completely different story. What was left of the colonial discourse has been thrown into one basket, and the discourse of internal colonization and migrant colonialism has been added. All of this has been mixed up, “cooked over the fire” by cultural studies. What is wrong with this postcolonial discourse?

I have a lot of respect for everyone, very good people: Edward Said, Homi Baba and Gayatri Spivak are the “trinity” of postcolonialism. They are migrants, they are intellectuals from their countries who came to the US. “Forget about your country, about the development of your country. Think about how to integrate migrants into our society” is a completely different story. This post-colonial discourse has nothing to do with the development of their own countries. I have a counter question, “Which postcolonial discourse is better? This one or ours?” Our academic anti-colonial discourse is satisfactory because it is not updated. But it is really aimed at the development of the countries themselves.

Fyodor Lukyanov: This is a very interesting topic, separate and large. Some time ago I thought about the fact that the BLM movement seems to be the most powerful intellectual trend against racism. But it has nothing to do with the outside world, it's intra-Western. They're figuring out some kind of relationship. I asked Africans I know, and I realized that they don't think it has anything to do with them. Maya, how do you think despite what Denis Andreevich said, does it work?

Maya Nikolskaya: Yes, of course, at the level of theorizing that Denis Andreyevich [said] well, it can work, but in applied terms, it's hard for me to say. [It is important] to differentiate by country and region. What [is] happening [now] in West Africa, I would call the “African Spring.” In the early 2010s, the ['Arab Spring'] wave did not reach Africa for various reasons, but now there is a renaissance, a political upsurge. There [anti-colonial discourse] is very much in demand there. West African countries have developed their own media, they have a lot of their own analytics, especially in the Francophone countries. This is due to the peculiarities of the French education system. Those who study French know that in textbooks, from the second year onwards, you are already asked how fair you think democratic institutions are.

In East Africa, I wouldn't say that [anti-colonialism --] is a widespread motto. My impression is that some people even feel uncomfortable that they are constantly being “poked in the nose” and that they are still in a neo-colonial state. Maybe they don't see it that way.

What I can definitely say is that there is a growing interest in our own history. Even in East Africa. People are recording videos, putting them on Youtube. Can you imagine, in a village near Kilimanjaro, a young man comes out and says that the Germans came to them at that time, that they fought with them, that their leader laid his head here, that he was pierced by thirty-seven German bullets, but he continued to fight with them for two more hours. Such stories suddenly become popular. Can this be considered part of neo-colonial history? It is possible that it can.

But then again, there are countries that are now much more interested in applied things, what is happening in their country, what is happening in their region. Although even in East Africa, there is a lot of writing about the fact that “Francafrique” is being replaced by “Amerafrique”. I mean, that's the way they think. I heard a completely wild conspiracy theory, if I may share it. I heard it from African scientists that the Anglo-Saxons and Russians decided to redivide Africa, the African continent. The theory is wild in itself, but it answers the question of whether something is brewing in this cauldron. [...]

Fyodor Lukyanov: Andrey, I know you and I had a conversation once that there is some overreaching.

Andrey Maslov: Yes, there is a little bit. I think it's very important to separate the audience here. I was engaged in six years of practical struggle against neocolonialism. [...In Nigeria] most of the laws still function as a legacy of the colonial system. I realized that you can't talk about neo-colonialism to Africans head-on, it often traumatizes them. It's important who you are talking to. [It's one thing if you're talking to people who are lost, separated from the distribution of basic goods, who don't have jobs but have time to go to demonstrations. They, protesting against the former metropolis, [the street] protesting against the power they have in their country, they don't separate them, they consider them as one.

But we have to learn to work not only with the street, even maybe not so much with the street, but with those in whose hands the power is. When you say that [an authority figure] is colonized, the response you get is, “Where am I colonized? I feel fine.”

About 15 years ago, I asked a Frenchman in Paris in [the ministry] who was in charge of Africa, who was their decision-making center for Africa, who was the authority who knew everybody. He thought about it and said: “Omar Bongo” [at the time, the president of Gabon]. He was integrated into all the French business councils, political structures, and bribed the French administration.

I say “postcolonialism,” I don't use the term “neocolonialism.” [...] Postcolonialism is the French trying to hold on with their teeth to the remnants of their influence. And neo-colonialism... [for Africans, is different altogether]. They say, for example, okay, we are in favor of a multipolar world, but we don't want these poles of yours that you have marked out, like Pretoria or Abuja, to do this neo-colonialism with us, that they agree with you [that they can do it here].

You have to carefully draw these fine lines. [There are] a lot of fine lines there in Africa that don't matter to us. And what we always say is, “strengthening the institutions of state power in Africa.” We have to help strengthen institutions. We cannot overthrow the remnants of colonialism, they have to be replaced with something, then they will fall off on their own.

What we see now in Gabon, Niger, is that the [post-colonial] system is falling apart. It is falling apart without external efforts, it is falling apart because of the dynamics of the historical process. The question is when and at what speed it will collapse and what will replace it, what new world will be built.

The main tool of postcolonialism is the management of demands for everything. They control the formation of demands within the state for goods, for candidates, for the media, for laws. Through this control of demands, they hold power. This is one of the tools. The energy industry has its own tools, finance has its own tools, mining has its own tools; compliance, and swifts. So many tools - and it's all post-colonialism. I think we need to do less denouncing and more capacity building for a new world, for a world in which we will be comfortable.

Africa's unification and subjectivity

Fyodor Lukyanov: With regard to the poles, I think this is a very important point. I don't mean Russia, but the whole world. We have gotten a little lost in these clichés, because, in fact, it turns out that none of the schemes can describe the world. Not so long ago, it seemed self-evident that the world was multipolar. But it is not, in fact, multipolar. These poles are so different, how can they be compared? I have one last question before we let the audience ask their concerns. Is Africa, in reality, and not at the level of statements by the president of Comoros or the current ECOWAS chief, consolidating somehow and gaining subjectivity? Is this tightening of Africa into a subject?

Denis Degterev: Africans have a discourse that is quite difficult to translate into Russian: “African agency”, agency, actorness. In other regions, they do not speak exactly the word “agency”. We have already talked many times about demographic potential. By 2120-2130, Africa will be the most populated continent, more than Asia. The population of Nigeria will be more than 700 million people. That is, Nigeria will be the third most populous country in the world. Congo and Ethiopia have populations of about 350 million each. I would conventionally compare the agency, the agency of [such] Nigeria, for example, with the current agency of India.  And for India, you can't even say “multi-vector”. They have the term “strategic autonomy.” I think that “African agency” will grow, including through increasing the demographic resource.

At the moment, of course, it's not like that. There is one classic article from 1982, it is often quoted by everyone: “sovereignty legal or empirical”. It is empirical sovereignty that is lame in a number of ways, both at the level of Afro-Union and at the level of any sub-regional organization. If the budgets of the African Union and [other regional organizations], especially everything related to security, are sixty percent funded by the European Union, what kind of agency are we talking about?

There are a number of other areas. But, of course, gradually [Africa's independent importance] is growing. I agree with Andrei Alexandrovich, this is a macro-historical process, it cannot be stopped, it is going slower or faster, but it cannot be stopped.

Maya Nikolskaya: I cannot say what path the African continent will follow, where it will grow next, whether it will consolidate more. Let's call it the big African ecosystem. There are so many processes happening simultaneously in this ecosystem. Something is changing from one aggregate state to another.

On the one hand, there are processes of forming nation-states, because no alternative to this institution has been invented yet. They are trying to build sovereignty, including from this point of view, and security, to acquire, as a package, what we talked about today. On the other hand, there are objective processes of African regional integration. There is pan-African integration and there is regional integration. When we talk about these things, it is useful to talk to Africans. If you ask someone with a Western perspective why Africans integrate something for themselves: the complementarity of economies is low, there are problems with transportation, there have never been navigable rivers in Africa except the Nile, what is there to integrate? They say to me: “Keep all these schemes for yourself”. In fact, it is a single space.

Simply speaking, when colonizers made borders, they did it with a circular and a ruler. And it turns out that the same people live on the territory of three states. A wonderful Ivorian jurist came to me recently from PFUR, a great friend of Denis Andreyevich. He told me: “I am from the Akan people, we live on the territory of Côte d'Ivoire. There are also people like us in Ghana. We believe that those lands in Ghana are our lands. And they think the other way around.” This is what I am told by a man who has lived in Russia for many years, a candidate of law. This amazing mix in consciousness persists. On the one hand, modernity, digital technologies, and on the other hand, the preservation of archaic institutions. And it works. Unification takes place at the level of regional groupings. Then there are African, all-African stories.

But so far it is difficult to say that the African continent is moving in a united rush to some kind of legal personality other than the G20, although I wish it very much. That was the original idea. There were two groups: the Monrovian group and the Kasablani group. The Casablanca group was in favor of a United States of Africa, something like that. But in the end the Monrovian group won. Maybe this idea will be revived one way or another.

I want to talk about what's going on in the minds, there's this thing called “Africanness” - a common African identity, a common Africanness. I've noticed that all Africans who work in certain environments (journalism, international studies) all know each other. This is amazing. It's not even the theory of six handshakes, it's the theory of three WhatsApp messages. You can find anyone from any country from roughly the same environment. When they came to the [Russia-Africa forum in St. Petersburg], I saw what African unity is. They all hang out together, they help each other. Some saw each other for the first time, but they identified each other in the crowd, and the contact took place. So maybe before the “african agency” takes place, the “african identity” will take place in a more consolidated form than it is now.

Andrey Maslov: It is difficult to add anything. We look through our binary approach: black and white, integration and disintegration. [Africa looks at it differently]. They have said, for example, that by 2063 Africa should become a single African state without borders. Such documents are not made in order to fulfill them, “a warrior has no goal, only a path.” Africans need integration in order to strengthen their sovereignty. This is fundamentally different from the European Union, for example, where states have sacrificed themselves, essentially. They lost their national decision-making systems, sacrificed the protection of their own citizens' interests, and gave everything into some common vat. In Africa, it's the opposite. They see integration as one way of building their own state. They are pursuing this goal of nation-building, and as long as they benefit from all these integration contours, they will use them. But this does not mean that they will dissolve into them.

[Study the chapter] by Denis Andreevich in our book Africa 2023, which is the first time a full map of African integration has been published. These are Euler circles, which show integration alliances. We had a collective effort to illustrate his article. All the other maps that were published before us were flawed. You can see from this picture how non-European Africans have a non-European mindset: regional groupings and how they overlap with each other. Burundi is in three and wants to enter a fourth integration union. They are supposed to compete with each other, to build some kind of closed common markets in order to unite into one. But in reality they are all intertwined.

In Africa, [political and social] structures are horizontal. There are very few hierarchical political systems there. It is precisely “Africanness” that is based on horizontal connections, when a person comes thousands of kilometers away to another country and finds a relative there. It doesn't [necessarily mean] that they have a common genealogy, just that it's his clan, the same totem, a mutually understood folklore. And you're in a completely unfamiliar city, but you already have some kind of frame of reference in which to live. Similarly, “african identity” will be closer, of course, than “african agency”. And they don't see that as a problem. They are absolutely not ready to form some kind of pan-African government. In this respect, Afro-Union's entry into the G21 is also an interesting story. Who will represent it there?

Maya Nikolskaya: The current chairperson of the African Union.

Andrey Maslov: Yes, and every time, every year, it will be a new person, a new story, a new face. It will not be an impersonal European bureaucracy, where it is not clear who makes decisions, who pulls the strings.

Fyodor Lukyanov: This scheme [from the book Africa-2023] and what my colleagues have just said are extremely interesting in relation not to Africa, but to global processes. My idea is that this Ubuntu, or whatever you want to call it, is what the entire world system is starting to lean toward, perhaps intuitively. The main thing is that no one is interested in blockchain anymore. To be more precise, there is the West, it has its own culture, and the rest of us, on the contrary, want to have open all the opportunities that can be used. Any block is a limitation of one's possibilities, maybe voluntary, but nevertheless. And now the trend is different, I think. Both the BRICS expansion and the G20, which ended yesterday, they just showed that. Although, of course, you compared Nigeria with India, I think there is still some difference. The thickness of India's culture and traditions ...

Denis Degterev: There were states on the territory of Nigeria in the pre-colonial period. We were talking to Andrei Alexandrovich about [Aliko] Dangote. Imagine a state, difficulties at customs, smuggling, Bush's legs. He is an oligarch, he is developing industry, he has agriculture there. And he, with his own money, says, I will buy what I need for customs: helicopters, small arms. It seems to me that there is a certain core in Nigeria, the “gene of strong statehood”. Despite all the problems, they have it, one of the strongest in Africa. Maybe I am wrong.

Andrey Maslov: By the way, for the first time Nigeria is now headed by a hereditary oligarch. This is a very important moment. [Before that] there were coups, the military came to power. This line, which opposed the democratic institutions partly, or rather - restrained the external influence, which spread through these institutions of formal democracy. And now [a businessman who] did not get rich overnight, like our privatizers, but grew up for generations in the system of traditional power has come to power.

The full version of the lecture