‘Negative messaging doesn’t work’ Meduza asks foreign policy experts about Kyiv’s challenges in Africa
After Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine in February 2022, only about half of Africa’s countries backed a U.N. resolution condemning Moscow’s invasion. In the years since, Kyiv has stepped up its diplomatic and humanitarian outreach across the continent, opening new embassies, organizing ministerial visits, and launching a food aid initiative. But more than three years into the full-scale war, Ukraine’s efforts still face an uphill battle. On top of boasting a diplomatic network that dates back to Soviet times, Moscow has intensified its disinformation campaigns in Africa, accusing Kyiv of using the Black Sea grain deal as a front for corruption and of selling Western-supplied weapons to “terrorist groups.” Meduza spoke with foreign policy experts about the challenges facing Kyiv in Africa and what it will take to build political and economic partnerships that endure beyond the war.
In August 2024, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Ukraine of opening “a second front in Africa.” Her remarks followed diplomatic backlash over allegations that Ukrainian operatives aided Tuareg separatists in an ambush that killed Malian soldiers and Russian mercenaries. Zakharova’s statement made no mention of those mercenaries, who first appeared in Mali in late 2021 to support the country’s military junta. Nor did she mention that Moscow has spent the better part of a decade leveraging paramilitary companies to push its interests in Africa.
Russia’s influence in Africa dates back to Soviet times. While its focus on the region faded after the USSR’s collapse, Moscow renewed its push after annexing Crimea in 2014, as relations with the West frayed. Now, Ukraine is playing catch-up. “Before the full-scale invasion, there was actually very limited Ukrainian presence in Africa,” said Samuel Ramani, an associate fellow at the Royal United Service Institute (RUSI). Prior to 2022, Ukraine had relatively few embassies on the continent and was “primarily focused on agricultural trade,” he explained.
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In the days after Russia launched its full-scale invasion, only 28 African countries supported a U.N. General Assembly resolution condemning Moscow’s aggression. Ramani called the vote, which saw the continent “almost evenly split” over support for Ukraine, “a wake-up call” for President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Later that year, Dmytro Kuleba became the first Ukrainian foreign minister to tour Africa. “[The] Russian narrative has been very present here,” Kuleba told journalists during his first stop in Dakar, Senegal, in October 2022. “Now it’s time for Ukrainian truths.”
Anti-colonial competition
Addressing African media in the summer of 2022, Zelensky called Russia a “colonizer who wants to destroy our state.” In its messaging to African nations, Ukraine has sought to draw parallels between its struggle against Russian imperialism and the continent’s own post-colonial experience. Yet Kyiv’s close ties to Europe and the U.S. often undermine that image.
“Ukraine is seen as a Western project, and is linked in the minds of many in the Global South with the agendas and the hypocrisy of colonial states,” said Jenny Mathers, a senior lecturer in international politics at Aberystwyth University. “Russia is good at playing this up.”
According to Philani Mthembu, the executive director of the South Africa–based Institute for Global Dialogue, framing Russia as a colonial power is unlikely to resonate in Africa. “When European countries use the colonial analysis to try to bring some degree of emotive response in Africa, it generally doesn’t go well,” he said, noting that similar attempts to brand China as a neo-colonial actor “didn’t go anywhere.”
Mthembu added that while Ukraine’s turn toward Europe and the U.S. made sense after the Soviet collapse, it created an opening for Russia in Africa. “Russia continued to position itself as almost a natural successor to the Soviet Union and all of its legacy,” he explained.
Indeed, leaning on memories of Soviet support for wars of independence across the continent, Moscow has cast itself as the true anti-colonial ally. At a Russia-Africa summit in 2023, President Vladimir Putin vowed to help African countries fight against Western “neo-colonialism,” a message Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has echoed throughout his tours of the continent. Russia’s narratives about protecting “traditional values” and reputation for supporting education also resonate, Mathers said. “[Moscow] offered and still offers scholarships to young Africans to study in Russia,” she recalled.
Putin has long railed against what he calls “the collective West,” casting it as the source of Russia’s ills and accusing it of “provoking” the war in Ukraine. According to Mthembu, many African governments see the war not simply as a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, but as part of a broader power struggle between Moscow and the West that they’d rather stay out of.
That perception, he added, has deprived Kyiv of its own agency in the eyes of some African policymakers — and Ukraine’s bid to join NATO has likely reinforced that view. “On the African continent, NATO means something completely different to what it means for Ukraine and for Europeans in general,” Mthembu underscored, pointing to lingering memories of the alliance’s 2011 intervention in Libya.
“People — maybe overly simplistically — say, ‘Ah, but Ukraine should remain neutral and have good relations with Russia and with Europe and with America.’And that’s not because they are buying Russian propaganda,” he added. “It’s just that they simply don’t have the same threat perception of Russia as Europeans do.”
The battle for Africa’s information space
This past April, Zelensky traveled to South Africa, marking his first official visit to the continent. The visit came on the heels of three years of diplomatic and humanitarian efforts, which saw Kyiv open eight embassies in African countries, organize high-level meetings, and deliver food aid to more than eight million people under the “Grain from Ukraine” initiative.
But according to Ramani, Ukraine continues to lag behind when it comes to spreading its messaging in Africa. “Russia’s got this ability to move first — to get its official narratives out before the West, and especially Ukraine, has time to counter them,” he told Meduza.
Moscow has spent years investing in media and cultural networks across the African continent, giving it both scale and reach. Though Ukraine has nearly doubled its number of embassies in Africa since 2022, Russia still has twice as many — along with a network of cultural outreach centers known as “Russian Houses.”
Russian state media outlets have also ramped up their expansion across Africa, opening new bureaus, striking deals with local channels, and rolling out content in additional regional languages. “Russia’s got some structural advantages that are very hard for Ukraine to dislodge,” Ramani said. “It’s very hard for Ukraine to be able to compete because they just don’t have an anchored TV or media presence.”
Ramani added that Russia has something else Ukraine lacks: “local influencers who can do their bidding.” Studies note an explosion of pro-Kremlin social media accounts in the Sahel since 2022. In 2024, the Africa Center for Strategic Studies found that Russia was “the primary purveyor of disinformation in Africa,” responsible for 40 percent of all disinformation campaigns on the continent. And RT, the Russian state propaganda outlet now banned in the West for broadcasting disinformation, has even begun offering training courses for African journalists.
When it comes to the war in Ukraine, Russia has done its best to fault Kyiv and the West for the knock-on effects for Africa. After its blockade of Ukrainian ports led to grain shortages and sent global prices soaring, the Kremlin blamed Western sanctions and Ukraine itself. After the U.N. brokered an agreement to keep grain exports flowing during the war, Putin claimed that Ukraine and Europe were using the initiative to hoard supplies intended for poorer nations. Then, during a tour of Africa shortly before Moscow withdrew from the deal in 2023, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov argued that the agreement was “no longer functioning.” The Kremlin amplified these narratives through the African branches of propaganda outlets RT and Sputnik, whose reports were picked up by several local news organizations.
But the narratives the Kremlin pushes don’t necessarily land. According to Mthembu, the notion that Russian propaganda is especially powerful in Africa is “inflated.” Even as outlets like Voice of America and BBC World Service have slashed or scaled back operations, Western news sources still enjoy widespread popularity across the continent. “It’s generally accepted amongst media experts that most ordinary Africans and policymakers […] consume much of their news from Western sources,” Mthembu explained. “Western news media have a much stronger presence than the Russians,” he added. “But it does not necessarily directly influence political decisions to align with Western interests.”
For most, the war’s negative impact on Africa’s economies and geopolitical stability matters more than taking sides. “I think people understand the reason we have inflation, higher grain prices, and our supply chains have been disrupted is because of this war,” Mthembu said. “People are not really interested in whether Russia blames Ukraine or the West.”
‘A more palatable approach’
Asked about Ukraine’s alleged military ventures in Africa in 2024, Military Intelligence Chief Kyrylo Budanov quipped, “We conduct such operations aimed at reducing Russian military potential anywhere where it’s possible. Why should Africa be an exception?”
The comment followed reports of Ukrainian special forces activity against Russian mercenaries in Sudan, who were aligned with rebel forces at the time. (The ambush in Mali came a few months later.) According to Mthembu, however, positioning itself as directly countering Russia in Africa may be a misguided approach for Ukraine. “I don’t see that gaining too much traction,” he said. “[African] policymakers don’t want to be told who to partner with. They don’t want to be told, ‘This is who your friends should be.’”
“The backlash against reports of Ukrainian involvement indicates that Russian paramilitary forces are seen as part of the status quo,” Mathers concurred, “whereas attempts by Ukraine to introduce their equivalent forces are regarded as interference, cynical ploys, and attempts to manipulate Africans into choosing sides in a distant war that they really do not want anything to do with.”
Russia has long carved out a niche for itself in paramilitary operations abroad and remains one of Africa’s largest weapons suppliers. But according to Mthembu, African policymakers don’t “romanticize” Russia’s role on the continent and are more inclined towards pragmatism. “As a matter of principle, most African countries will take the position that they are open to all partnerships,” he said. “I don’t think there will be an overt effort to elbow Ukraine out of Africa.”
At least for now, Ukraine’s military involvement in Africa remains limited — even though Kyiv recently offered to train Mauritanian troops as tensions rise with neighboring Mali, whose government forces are backed by Moscow. “After the Mali operation and the Sudan operation, there’s been a drop-off in HUR [Ukrainian military intelligence] activity,” Ramani noted. “[We] haven’t really heard of any major operations being planned or HUR operators showing up in new places.”
The way Mthembu sees it, Ukraine would be better off leveraging its own military capabilities and innovations, which are being tested on the battlefield in real time.“If it’s about military cooperation, saying to African governments and stakeholders, ‘Look, Ukraine has one of the largest armies in Europe, it’s built up its defense technology, it’s innovated, and we can work with you when it comes to your own security interests’ is a more palatable approach,” he argued. “But the challenge is, if it positions its military presence in Africa as a way of countering Russia, then that again plays into the narrative of Ukraine as an extension of U.S. or Western interests.”
Finding Ukraine’s voice
In February 2025, three years into Moscow’s full-scale war and Ukraine’s push to win over African partners, the number of African countries backing a U.N. resolution condemning Russia’s aggression fell to just 13. Eight voted against it while 33 abstained or didn’t participate. But as bleak as that might seem, Mthembu stressed that withholding support for Ukraine isn’t the same as siding with Russia.“Many people truly do think this war needs to end,” he said. “But what they’re not willing to do is take a strong side.”
“African leaders have expressed irritation with the idea that they should have to choose between having good trading and other relations with Russia and the same with Ukraine,” Mathers noted. “A wiser course of action for Kyiv would be to focus on what Ukraine can offer to communities in Africa and what it wishes to receive in return.”
According to Mthembu, Ukraine should focus on pragmatic cooperation and establishing its own narrative rather than trying to directly counter the Kremlin line. “Negative messaging doesn’t work in Africa,” he said. Instead, Kyiv should try to play to its traditional strengths. “Ukraine is an agricultural country,” he said. “There are areas for possible cooperation when it comes to food security.”
While Russia has built a visible media and diplomatic presence on the continent, Mthembu noted that its actual economic involvement remains limited. “The reality is that compared to others, at least economic-footprint-wise, Russia is not a major player in Africa,” he said. “I think what Ukraine can take from Russia is the ability to find niche areas that give you a larger presence in people’s imaginations with very limited resources.”
“It makes a lot of sense for Ukraine to look beyond its immediate neighborhood for trading and diplomatic partners and for future investors in its own industries,” Mathers agreed. “Ukraine needs more global partnerships, not only in wartime but for the postwar recovery and its economic prosperity in the future.”
Though experts agreed that Ukraine won’t be able to “go toe to toe” with Russia in terms of embassies or media outreach, Mthembu argued that Kyiv could build on the existing diplomatic infrastructure of its European allies to highlight its own strengths and cultivate relationships built on reciprocity rather than rivalry. “European embassies [in Africa] don’t miss an opportunity to mention Ukraine and the Ukrainian perspective,” he noted.
But building relationships that stand on their own will take time — and strategic engagement. “[Ukraine] has to target certain key states on the continent,” Mthembu explained. “It’s not about convincing them to be pro-Ukrainian. But if other countries realize that there’s greater engagement between Ukraine and South Africa, Nigeria, Algeria and maybe Egypt [or] Ethiopia — key countries in certain parts of the continent — then it will allow Ukraine to find its voice.”
Though shifting voting patterns at the U.N. may be more of a challenge, that’s not the only measure of success. Despite the obstacles, there are signs of progress. In South Africa, Ukraine’s visibility has grown thanks to high-level visits, direct contact between leaders, and greater engagement from Ukrainian civil society and research institutions. “There is an openness to engaging with Ukraine,” Mthembu said. “But you need to have your own narrative, your own story. You can’t build relations purely against another country.”
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