The report finds that the Chinese government and its representatives are entrenched in corrupt networks in Africa, helping to encourage and empower local kleptocrats who seek to enrich themselves at the expense of their populations. The new report from the International Forum for Democratic Studies finds that Russia and China has reinforced kleptocratic networks in Africa and undermined democracy on that continent, with emphasis on the role of the Wagner group in this process.
In a virtual debate organized by the National Endowment for Democracy, a North American non-governmental organization that aims to promote democracy in other countries, several experts yesterday addressed the report’s conclusions and pointed out how Beijing and Moscow have played “a crucial role in enabling kleptocracy” across sub-Saharan Africa.
For JR Mailey, specialist at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, the Russian mercenary group Wagner positioned itself as “everything a kleptocratic Government could want and need”.
“Wagner is, in some ways, a unique case study because all they provide is a kind of quick and dirty toolkit for surviving as an isolated kleptocracy(…).
Instructors were simply sent to help bolster a Government’s capacity for regime-oriented security, that’s what it’s all about universally.
They help influence public opinion and not in a way that softens hearts and minds, but, in a broader sense, undermines the capacity of adversaries,” said Mailey about Wagner’s work in Africa.
According to the report by the International Forum for Democratic Studies, the short-lived mutiny carried out by the Wagner group in June in Russia “highlighted one of the dark global tentacles of Russia’s influence”.
“At a time when Moscow is increasingly isolated diplomatically and economically, the Wagner group’s corrosive business interests and cozy relations in parts of Africa – with some of the continent’s most diplomatically isolated regimes – reveal the extent to which a global support network kleptocratic took shape,” says the report.
Mailey stressed that the military support offered by the Russian paramilitary group to African kleptocrats has little to do with providing security and stability to the African people. Instead, it focuses on extracting resources, promoting geopolitical objectives and “serving as a brutal cog in the authoritarian machine”.
“Even if the final fate of the Wagner Group remains uncertain, these trends are unlikely to abate. The opaque economic relations that the Wagner group has developed on the continent are, without a doubt, too profitable for the Kremlin to surrender,” he argued.
The report also points out that the Chinese Government and its representatives are entrenched in corrupt networks in Africa, helping to encourage and empower local kleptocrats who seek to enrich themselves at the expense of their populations.
In addition to long-standing Chinese involvement in the timber and extractive industries, Andrea Ngombet Malewa, founder of the Sassoufit Collective – an organization that defends democracy in the Republic of Congo – highlighted the creation of a Sino-Congolese Bank for Africa that would allow kleptocrats to bypass the transparency requirements of Western-linked banks, thus providing opportunities for money laundering with impunity.
According to the report, kleptocracy is one of the main causes of underdevelopment, human rights violations and wars on the African continent.
