The Sahel’s Great Game: Combatting Russian Influence in Africa

Mark Adams

In Mali, protestors burn Western flags while brandishing signs proclaiming a love for Russia, as traditional chiefs perform rituals that synthesize tradition with political claims, demanding an end to neo-colonial interference in their country. This is not a scene from the Cold War; although the actors may seem reminiscent, the context is quite different. Across Africa, since 2020, throughout the southern band of the Saharan desert known as the Sahel region, a smattering of coups has taken place that has replaced many of the formerly French-backed clientelist regimes with military autocracies dependent on military & political support from Wagner, a state-funded Russian private military company. Many countries in the Sahel region have been the victims of terrorist attacks, perpetrated by local branches of Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, alongside regional separatists such as the ethnic Tuareg people in northern Mali who have been fighting to create their own breakaway state, called Azawad, since 2012. After years of engagement under Operation Barkhane, the French military, the former colonial power of the region, was forced to depart in 2022 by the urging of the respective military coup junta leaders. This disengagement represents the end result of many Western failures in the region to present itself as a viable security partner capable of producing an ideologically coherent package of political and economic reform. The Sahel nations are in dire need of a regional power’s protection due to the threat of terrorism and their weak political structures. However, this also shows blithe Western dismissal of the pernicious effects of mass media campaigns designed to influence the minds of Africans employed by groups connected to the Russian State. Although the Sahel may seem like an interminable headache of corrupt elites versus insurrectionary rebel groups that causes for an absurd amount of U.S. money to be poured into another desert quagmire, this region is actually the canary in the mine for Western influence and a litmus test for the future of Western political will. In ten short years, the perception of the West has gone from salvatory to scorn. The Western global order has been dealt a humiliating blow by being shown to be incapable of managing the regional security that it supposedly had interest in guaranteeing.

If the West is to continue to position itself as the leader of global order, based on economic and political liberalism, it must be able to offer a reliable security guarantee that comes with economic transformation. Additionally, it must use its vast media apparatus to extol the virtues of democratization and denounce Russian propaganda that seeks to misinform and divide in order to expand its own influence. Western failure to live up to these expectations will be an indication to other flashpoint regions that the West is overexerted and incapable of playing an influential role, thus triggering the thawing of conflicts that have been prevented by Western backing, to include NATO’s Eastern flank, the Middle East, and the South China Sea. As anti-Western powers, such as Russia, cultivate influence over these states, they gain diplomatic and economic resources that allow them to circumvent Western levers of power, such as sanctions and U.N. resolutions. To understand how to rebuild Western influence, one must first see what caused it to fall. 

Russia and its pawn, Wagner, have essentially crafted a ready-made package to pull a state under its influence and transform a struggling democratic state aligned with the West into a Russian diplomatic ally and economic resource. Although this essay will not significantly enter into Chinese economic competition, aggressive Chinese development threatens Western economic influence while leaving space for Western ideological promotion. First, African leaders are courted by Putin and high-level Russian diplomatic officials, who advocate a shift towards a security partnership less restrictive on human rights and democratic governance, such as during the 2019 Sochi conference. Although Western-backed regimes have not universally respected democratic governance, economic aid and investment has been long tied to human rights standards, especially in a world after the Global War on Terrorism. In accord with the governing strongman of the country, often who arrived in power from a coup, Wagner begins to create military bases within the country. 

Wagner has three main functions: military, political, and economic. Wagner provides military support for the regime by training troops, providing intel, and fighting alongside local military in counterterrorism campaigns. This allows the fledgling regime to stand on its own two feet and often leads to the rejection of Western military, such as the coup leader of the Mali junta, Assimi Goïta, calling for the end of the French counterterrorism operation in the region, Operation Barkhane, days after coming to power. Politically, Wagner also implants a massive disinformation network that serves to capitalize on growing doubt on the viability of Western partnership and provides so-called “support” in monitoring elections that serves to intimidate. This network is composed of the Russian state-owned international networks RT News and Sputnik, private Russian entrepreneurs who profit from this increased media influence, and local NGOs or media producers who are sponsored by Wagner. In the case of Mali, this disinformation network serves to flood the media marketplace with content thematically close to pan-Africanist ideas, critiquing French influence as seen in the Franc CFA, Military intervention, and economic aid.  From 2018 to 2022, articles published per month by the Russian-sponsored media networks RT France and Sputnik Africa with the tag "Mali" increased respectively by roughly 5 times. In return, Wagner gains quid pro quo economic contracts for mining and resource extraction, which allows Russia to circumvent Western sanctions by dealing in hard to track physical materials such as gold and timber. This process of state capture results in an authoritarian regime propped up by Russian military and political support reliant on resource extraction contracts to pay off their godfathers. With so much influence over these weak states, it is no surprise Russia is able to gain much more diplomatic support at the United Nations. In the UN resolution condemning Russia for the Ukrainian invasion, 26 African nations failed to support the resolution. Nations with high Wagner influence, including Sudan, CAR, and Mali who abstained, and Burkina Faso, who had no recorded vote, were less likely to support the resolution.

The West failed in the Sahel for two reasons. Firstly, it failed to provide a successful counter-terrorism program that could prove ideological authority in people’s minds. Regardless of military successes, counter-terrorism operations must do more to convince locals of the purpose  of the partnership and show superiority to other offers. Secondly, it was blind to the Russian disinformation network that sows mass discontent and felt invincible to the possibility of Russian competition. Even before the coup in Mali, the Russian-sponsored disinformation machine was turning at full speed, laying the ground for a rejection of the Western liberal order. This greased the gears for the fall of much of the vast neo-colonial influence of the French in the Sahel region. To triage these shortcomings, the West must do more to reinforce the utility of counter-terrorrism in remaining countries with high levels of influence, such as Chad, Senegal, and Gabon. Secondly, the West must use its media influence with the clear intentions of showing the efforts of the liberal order while showing the consequences of Russian partnerships: human right violations, democratic backsliding, and economic corruption. Lastly, the West needs to unleash its vast economic resources to focus on investment in the content, competing with the value-blind investment of powers such as China, UAE, and Turkey. Previous Western mistakes in the region that have upheld neo-colonial hierarchies of power should be shifted towards new systems that authentically advocate for democratic governance. For the meantime, the West should conserve what influence it has while waiting for a good opportunity to expand influence in states that have recently moved towards Russia. If the West fails to do this, this will be the first domino to fall of regions with plummeting Western influence, and show that the West no longer has the power, will, or influence to preserve the order it has created. If the West shows weakness here, next will be the annexation of Ukraine, the remaking of the Middle Eastern regional order, and the heating up of the conflict in the South China Sea. This means the collapse of the Western liberal order based on free trade, human rights, and democracy, and an isolationist West licking its wounds as regional bullies like Russia and China try to dominate their neighbors and return to pre-WW2 norms of conquest.

(This article was originally printed in the Fall 2025 edition of our print magazine. To see the entire magazine, click here.)