Explaining the Wagner Group’s influence in Africa
Karen Philippa Larsen and Katja Lindskov Jacobsen explore the economics of the Wagner Group and how Russia benefits from the limitations of western interventions
On 24 August 2023, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will have lasted for 18 months. While waging this brutal war in Ukraine, Russia is also increasingly engaged on the African continent in ways that demand a careful response.
Russia’s presence in Africa largely unfolds through the infamous Wagner Group. Ostensibly a ‘private’ military company, it has such close ties to the Russian state that it is more suitably described as a ‘semi-state’ actor. While the group’s missions in Africa seem to have proceeded unchanged since its recent attempted mutiny in Russia, the announced death of its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin has thrown the future of the group into question. However, it remains relevant to understand how the Wagner Group expanded its presence on the African continent. Indeed, the model it represents, whereby states seek influence via ‘semi-state’ actors, will remain important. And, crucially, for liberal intervention actors, whose presence the Wagner Group challenged in several African states, it also remains important to continue rethinking their approaches to intervention, regardless of what the future of the Wagner Group’s Africa engagements will look like.
While many assumed that the Russian invasion of Ukraine would curtail Wagner operations in Africa, the opposite has been the case so far — i.e. up until the announced death of Prigozhin. The most prominent examples of the group’s involvements, some of which we outline in our research, include Mali, Sudan, Libya and the Central African Republic (CAR) where additional Wagner Group forces arrived ahead of the recent constitutional referendum. Analysts have also identified Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, and Niger (following the recent military coup), as countries Wagner may be planning to intervene in.
In this blogpost we explain how the Wagner Group has thus far managed to sustain its presence in Africa in spite of the Russia–Ukraine war and why greater introspection is needed from liberal intervention actors aiming to respond its growing influence. Such introspection remains necessary.
The economics of the Wagner Group in Africa
An important but often neglected aspect of the Wagner Group’s engagements in Africa is its economics, which charts a different map of their presence on the continent. It includes, in addition to the aforementioned countries where Wagner Group forces are present, countries like Madagascar, where its presence is mainly political and economic.
Access to gold, diamonds, forestry and other resources have up until now been central to an expansive set of business engagements that sustain the group’s presence in Africa and benefit it financially. These income sources are often illegal, including accusations of gold smuggling and illegal extraction of resources. Indeed, the group is alleged to have used violence, coercion and even killings, to force their targets to give or cheaply sell their goods to the organization.
Severe critique has been directed at Wagner Group forces, documenting their brutal behaviour in CAR and Mali. Such critique is certainly important. Yet more attention must at the same time be paid to the downsides of the group’s economic activities, which not only allow the Wagner Group to sustain itself financially, but also generate profit to support its operations elsewhere. Moreover, the Wagner Group’s economic presence can also undermine the budget of the states in which it operates. When the group is allowed to collect taxes or is awarded mining concessions without having to pay the state, the budget of that state decreases, as does its ability to provide services to its population. This raises a fundamental dilemma for liberal actors: can they continue to fund development projects in states where the Wagner Group is present, knowing that part of the state budget, directly or indirectly, benefits the group? On the other hand, what will happen to the local civilian population, if liberal actors withdraw from those engagements? The Wagner Group has no record of providing any such services.
The economic aspects of the Wagner Group’s presence in Africa are important for two reasons. First, because they indicate that the group was unlikely to leave Africa. This of course was prior to Prigozhin’s announced death. Additionally, the economic aspects have allowed the Wagner Group to exercise ‘self-financed’ influence in several African countries and by extension allowed Russia to outplay liberal intervention actors and be recognised as a powerful player globally. Hence, the announced death of Prigozhin may not only affect the Wagner Group in Africa, but may also affect Russia’s influence in some African countries.
Why it is vital for the West to address its failings
When trying to answer the questions posed by the Wagner Group’s presence in Africa, we must consider what it tells us about liberal intervention’s failings in Africa. Devoid of sufficient caution, liberal responses risk having unintended effects, including strengthening Russia’s and the Wagner Group’s appeal. It would be a mistake to view Prigozhin’s announced death as an invitation to consider the importance of genuinely revisiting the liberal approach with less seriousness.
This risk is most obvious when liberal intervention actors explain Russia’s engagement in Africa through what we call vacuum logic. This logic suggests that Russia engages in African countries where liberal intervention actors have downscaled or withdrawn. Russia, it is argued, fills the vacuum created after the departure of liberal actors.
This logic risks making liberal intervention actors blind to the significance of African agency, as well as to the ways in which Russia and the Wagner Group are sometimes considered attractive partners. Indeed, the Wagner group is, at times, deliberately chosen over continued partnerships with them — hence not simply filling a vacuum left where liberal actors willingly retreat.
On the one hand, the vacuum logic also portrays the Wagner Group (and Russia) as entirely illegitimate partners. In so doing, it creates the impression that countering Russian influence is more important to liberal intervention actors than taking African voices seriously and assisting African states in addressing security challenges.
On the other, it portrays liberal intervention actors as the only legitimate security partners for African states, which obscures the urgency of internal critique of liberal intervention. Without reflecting on liberal actors’ own interventions, including how they have failed to address the security concerns of African states, liberal actors risk repeating past mistakes. This now comes with the added risk that such errors may strengthen Russia’s attractiveness and exacerbate liberal actors’ declining popularity as security partners. Ultimately, liberal intervention actors fail to appreciate that whether and how they themselves are present in African states is not entirely up to liberal actors themselves.
Conclusion
While the effects of Prigozhin’s death on the Wagner Group’s operations in Africa are currently unclear, it remains vital to understand how Wagner has expanded its presence on the continent. In the Wagner Group liberal intervention actors face a model that may indeed remain: an organization that is profitable, self-sustaining and one that some see as providing African states with more convincing security guarantees than they do. Only by understanding why their own interventions fail host states and by redesigning them accordingly can liberal intervention actors begin to address the reasons why African states choose to partner with actors like the Wagner Group. With no confirmation that the Wagner Group or Russia will end their profitable engagements on the African continent, a well-informed response by liberal actors remains more important than ever.
Karen Philippa Larsen is a PhD-student at Danish Institute for International Studies. She researches Russia’s use of private military companies.
Katja Lindskov Jacobsen is a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Military Studies at the Department of Political Science, Copenhagen University.
Their article, ‘Liberal intervention’s renewed crisis: responding to Russia’s growing influence in Africa’ was published in the January 2023 issue of International Affairs.
All views expressed are individual not institutional.
