Ambition is there but resources may not be, African academics warn ahead of summit
African academics have warned that Russia’s ravaged economy may struggle to fulfil any science and technology collaboration agreements the country enters into with Africa at a summit this week.
The comments came on the eve of the second Russia-Africa Summit, which is taking place on 27 and 28 July in St Petersburg. A number of African heads of state are expected to appear, including South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa.
The summit has plenty of science sessions on the agenda. Space science, nuclear research and artificial intelligence are among the areas where deeper collaboration is on the cards.
But some African international relations and science policy experts warn that Russia’s financial hardship as it continues to face international sanctions due to its actions in Ukraine might prevent it from delivering on promises.
The willingness to invest is there, said Mammo Muchie, a technology innovation scholar based at the Tshwane University of Technology in South Africa. But Russia’s ability to act is “very weak” and that presents “a challenge”.
The first Russia-Africa Summit, which took place in 2019, also prioritised science and technology, Muchie noted. It resulted in a declaration that set the scene for more joint research and academic exchange. But the Covid-19 pandemic and the rising tensions around Ukraine have hampered progress, he said.
The war has shrunk Russia’s ability to support research elsewhere, said Nithaya Chetty, dean of the science faculty at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. “In principle, Africa-Russian cooperation has continued. But funding for international cooperation in Russia has decreased, affecting mobility and participation.”
Change of tactics
Faced with a resource crunch, Russia might opt to change support tactics in Africa, said Olayinka Ajala, a Nigeria-born politics lecturer based at Leeds Beckett University in the UK. Rather than offering large technology transfer projects, it might opt to send experts to train Africans or invite more African students to Russia.
Ajala added that Russia is also likely to tell African summit delegates that anything they agree will last for three years, until the next Russia-Africa Summit. The war in Ukraine—in Russia’s view—is unlikely to last that long. “That will resonate well with African countries,” Ajala said.
He also predicted that African countries are unlikely to get their way on the hot topics of the conference—including derailed grain export deals that threaten food security on the continent—if they do not speak with one voice. “With all the previous summits, we notice that individual interests come before collective ones. Then we just get another jamboree.”
Chetty believes it is important to keep scientific channels with Russia open, as long as scientists do not contribute to the war effort. “Scientific collaboration may be one of the last avenues for rational discourse with Russia, and severing this link could be perilous, leading to a pariah state similar to North Korea,” he said.
Gilbert Khadiagala, a professor of international relations at the University of the Witwatersrand, does not think Russia’s actions in Ukraine, or Western nations’ denunciation of them, will dampen the African appetite for Russian science.
“African countries still need the science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills that Russia provides,” he says. “A lot of African countries will continue to engage Russia in these fields irrespective of what the Putin government does in the political and security arena.”
A version of this article also appeared in Research Europe