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Back to Africa: Russia’s New African Engagement

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Africa and the New World Era

Abstract

After receiving significant attention and resources as a major theater of the Soviet Union’s Cold War-era competition not only with the United States, but with the People’s Republic of China,1 Africa largely lost its place in the Kremlin’s foreign policy with the fall of Communism. While the successor to the former Soviet Union, the Russian Federation, never entirely withdrew from the continent, its engagement with African states was severely limited throughout the 1990s, as a result of both policy choices and economic constraints. This has changed over the course of the decade of the twenty-first century as a combination of strategic and economic factors have motivated a renewed interest in Africa on the part of the leaders of a newly resurgent—and increasingly assertive—Russia.

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Notes

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Jack Mangala

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© 2010 Jack Mangala

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Pham, J.P. (2010). Back to Africa: Russia’s New African Engagement. In: Mangala, J. (eds) Africa and the New World Era. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230117303_5

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