Africa Faces the Unintended Consequences of Relying on Russian PMCs

Bottom Line

• Contracting Russian private military companies, whether Wagner or its successor organization, the Africa Corps, is likely to lead to a series of unintended consequences for client states. In addition to increases in indiscriminate violence, outsourcing security to Russian private military companies can generate intra-military frictions that can exacerbate fragile civil-military relations.

• Given the recent surge in coup activity across the region, intra-military friction that could contribute to the erosion of norms is a critical threat to the stabilization of civil-military relations in the Sahel.
• As Africa Corps continues to expand across the Sahel, American foreign policy practitioners and observers would be well served to look beyond the immediate effects of their activities through a zero-sum lens.
• The long-term effects of Russian private military companies’ activities and tactical choices will expose their deficiencies as security partners. While the West has ceded ground in terms of immediate influence in the region, the pendulum could move back to center as the time horizon expands.

Over the past decade, the Wagner Group made significant inroads across the African continent. Despite the death of its financier and figure-head, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the mercenary outfit has remained a fixture in Libya, Sudan, the Central African Republic (CAR), and Mali. Now under the auspices of the Russian state and the banner of the Africa Corps (or Expeditionary Corps), it has expanded its operations in Africa’s Sahel region, opening missions in Burkina Faso and now Niger. Yet, despite the Kremlin’s rebranding and takeover, Africa Corps and its broader missions appear quite similar to those of its predecessor. For client states, relying on Russian private military companies (PMCs) is a costly proposition—one which will fail to produce desired security and instead is likely to generate or exacerbate grievances within the security sector. As a quasi-PMC, Wagner spearheaded security deals with dictators and military juntas for money and access to natural resources. In Libya, it fought alongside the forces of Khalifa Haftar and the Libyan National Army in hopes of acquiring access to Libya’s rich oil fields. In Sudan, it was contracted first by Omar al-Bashir to conduct disinformation operations and quash protestors in exchange for gold and act as a facilitator for Moscow’s ambitions to acquire a naval base at Port Sudan. In CAR it served as a praetorian guard for the Touadéra regime, as it gained access to lucrative mining operations and carved out its own economic projects from the timber trade to the alcohol industry. In Mali, it capitalized on anti-French sentiment, selling itself as the partner of choice for a nascent junta keen on breaking relations with Paris and in desperate need of counterterrorism support. Following the death of Prigozhin in August of 2023, the Russian state engaged in a concerted effort to reel in the Wagner enterprise and fold the mercenary outfit into a new project under the command and control of the Russian Ministry of Defense, and specifically, the Main Intelligence Directorate. That project has had its own growing pains, but its expansion to Burkina Faso and Niger suggests progress. The latter mission has been billed as particularly worrisome for the United States, as the Russian outfit enters upon the drawdown of a decade-long American counterterrorism operation that saw the construction of a $100 million airbase and was a key hub for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance across the region. As these new missions suggest, Wagner, and its successor organization, offer the Kremlin far more than mere economic exploitation across a host of countries. They afford Moscow geopolitical access and influence on the relative cheap. Jockeying for influence across Africa, Russia’s private military enterprise promises clients enhanced security with “no strings attached” and permissive environments that favor authoritarian entrenchment. Mercenaries train armies and fight alongside them without lectures on human rights and the importance of civil-military relations—a value proposition attractive to young military regimes fatigued by partnerships with the West that were riddled with moral guardrails. In reality, however, Russian PMCs come with different strings attached and a host of unintended consequences. Short-Term Consequences: Civilian Casualties and Exploitation Wagner was a welcome feature by several African governments marred in severe and enduring security crises. In CAR, where civil war has been boiling for over a decade, Touadéra relied on Wagner to repel a rebel offensive around the 2020 election.