Kremlin announcement comes as Wagner Group quits West African state of Mali.
Russia is working to enhance its economic and military ties in Africa, Moscow has outlined.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declared on Monday that Russia’s presence in Africa is “growing”. The move is part of an ongoing bid by Moscow to step into a geopolitical vacuum in West Africa as Western powers retreat amid a series of military coups in the region.
“We really intend to comprehensively develop our interaction with African countries, focusing primarily on economic and investment interaction,” Peskov told reporters.
“This also corresponds to and extends to such sensitive areas as defence and security,” he added.
Russia’s growing security role in parts of Africa, including in countries such as Mali, Central African Republic and Equatorial Guinea, is viewed with concern by the West, and has come at the expense of former colonial power France, whose forces have departed or been expelled from several West African countries over recent years, and the United States.
The Kremlin’s ambition appears undimmed by recent reports that Russian paramilitary group Wagner is leaving Mali after helping the military government fight armed groups.
The Africa Corps, a Kremlin-controlled paramilitary force, said it will remain in the West African country in Wagner’s place.
Mali, ruled by a military government that seized power in coups in 2020 and 2021, has never officially admitted Wagner’s presence, insisting only that it was working with Russian instructors.
During the same period, however, the government broke ties with France and pivoted towards Russia for political and military support.
The Africa Corps was created with support from the Russian Ministry of Defence after Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin and commander Dmitry Utkin led a failed mutiny against the Russian army leadership in June 2023 and were killed two months later in a plane crash.
According to several Telegram chats used by Russian mercenaries seen by the Reuters news agency, about 70 to 80 percent of the Africa Corps is made up of former Wagner members.
Replacing Wagner with Africa Corps troops would likely shift Russia’s focus in Mali from fighting alongside the Malian army to training, said Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel programme at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.
“Africa Corps has a lighter footprint and focuses more on training, providing equipment and doing protection services. They fight less than the ‘Rambo-type’ Wagner mercenaries,” Laessing told The Associated Press news agency.
