[Africa: Strategic Rivalries] - Russia and China: the Digital Domain as a Vector for Expansion

How are China and Russia Mobilizing Digital Technology in Their Strategies on the African Continent?

Charlotte Escorne (CE) – Today, China is mobilizing a whole discourse with both economic and diplomatic dimensions through the New Silk Roads (NSR). The digital component of the NSR introduced in 2017 calls for China to build infrastructure and "digital highways" to enhance the development of countries in the South and strengthen economic and diplomatic ties between China and the "Global South." In fact, China’s digital presence on the African continent goes back a long way. As early as the first decade of the twenty-first century, Huawei set out to conquer African markets, targeting countries and territories (such as rural areas) in which other equipment manufacturers (American, European, South Korean) had lost interest. For these areas, the appeal of purchasing Chinese equipment lies in its lower-cost technologies, which are better suited to certain spatial constraints (dust, rodents, power cuts), and Huawei’s internal policy of rewarding employees who travel to areas that are difficult to work in for accessibility or security reasons. In fact, Chinese Huawei and ZTE equipment have a very strong presence in developing or "Southern" countries. However, the Chinese presence in the digital sector and its articulation with China’s strategy are, for the moment, essentially infrastructural in ambition and dimension, in the lower layers of cyberspace, and are completely uncorrelated with China’s strategy. Nevertheless, Huawei’s presence is now enabling China to justify its entire focus on the digital component of the NSR and to promote the action it has taken "for the development of the countries of the South."

That said, Russia’s digital influence in Africa extends to virtually every layer of cyberspace. Of course, first and foremost, there are the higher layers, known as "semantic" or "informational," which would include the companies run by the late Yevgeny Prigozhin, which have been reconfigured but whose business models endure. We are also talking about platforms such as Yandex, which is known to be increasingly influential in West Africa-for example, with Yango, a very popular taxi/VTC app, in Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal. Russia is also increasingly present on the lower, i.e., infrastructural, layers, notably by promoting the "Sovereign RUnet" model (a digital sovereignty strategy, according to a 2019 law aimed at controlling the Russian internet) on the continent. Here, Sovereign RUnet needs to be considered not just as a hardware/software technical device but also as a set of legal and moral standards and, last but not least, a geopolitical device in the sense that Russia is trying to sell this hardware with the ideological narrative that goes with it. This concept is being sold to African countries such as Burkina Faso. We’re seeing some interesting things on the subregion’s network, for example, but also some ambitious agreements between the Burkinabé junta and the Russian government, signed at the Africa-Russia forum held in Moscow in July 2023.

Is there cooperation, complementarity, or rivalry between the Chinese and Russian approaches on the African continent?

KL – There is de facto complementarity because these two states don’t play in the same category. They don’t have the same resources; therefore, they don’t have the same strategy. China has a major asset, its economic weight and its economic giants, whereas Russia today has a real problem that has been structural since the Soviet era: it lacks a competitive hardware industry. The Soviets had developed lines of microprocessors, computers ... but these industries collapsed with the Soviet Union, notably because they came from Eastern Europe, the GDR, or Belarus. In fact, faced with the international market, these industries were not competitive. In the early 2010s, attempts were made. Russia, for example, tried to develop its own telephone network protocol called "iota." They only sold it to Nicaragua-it was a total fiasco. Since then, Russian players have found it very difficult to revive the hardware industry. This is a fundamental problem for them, because Sovereign RUnet is built on a technical architecture, hardware, and software, only a very small portion of which is manufactured in Russia. The technologies used tend to be Chinese, American, Taiwanese... The TSPU boxes used to monitor and control Russian cyberspace, for example, are manufactured using foreign components. This area is not yet covered by sanctions, which is a problem.

CE – There isn’t really any rivalry between the Chinese and Russians when it comes to building network infrastructure because Russian manufacturers are not as well positioned as China on the continent and don’t have equivalent industries. The five global equipment manufacturers sharing this market are Huawei and ZTE (China), Nokia/Ericsson (Finland/Sweden), Samsung (South Korea), and, to a lesser extent, Cisco (USA). I’m talking about network infrastructure because there are many more companies positioning themselves in the digital terminal market. In Senegal, both public and private companies can respond to invitations to tender, so any company is free to apply. In Diamniadio, forty-five minutes from Dakar, the political and economic capital, I saw, for example, a public data center built by the Russians, at least the construction infrastructure, but I don’t have much more information at this stage. It’s hard to say whether it’s just the construction part or the digital part (hardware, software, or component assembly). There was another one made by the Chinese, with Huawei equipment and other data centers built by private players whose hardware and software composition I don’t know.

From the point of view of services and applications, what I observed during my fieldwork between 2021 and 2023 in West Africa was that there weren’t really any Chinese applications in use apart from TikTok, whereas Yango, the Russian application, is widely used.

KL – There are a lot of Russian companies importing and exporting hardware to Africa, but they’re more like logistic intermediaries, especially for Chinese hardware.

CE -China doesn’t take a position on doctrinal issues, unlike Russia, with its data sovereignty issues. On the other hand, it does stress the importance for African countries of buying Chinese data centers, which will enable data to be relocated in African countries so that they can acquire greater sovereignty, and of promoting the argument that China is helping countries to develop, to strengthen a sovereign internet, to facilitate control of data on their territory, denouncing in passing the persistence of imperialism in countries that have been colonized by Western countries, for example.

KL - That’s where there’s a convergence with Russian discourse, although the latter is more elaborate. Russian discourse creates a kind of geopolitical grammar, a meta-discourse that allows for the interpretation of global power relations in terms of highly malleable and evolving notions. As far as Africa is concerned, the representation developed by this framework of understanding is clearly that of a territory exploited by the Western powers, where digital technology is one of the vectors of this exploitation. In this respect, we can see a complementarity between the Chinese approach, which comes with infrastructural solutions, and the Russian approach, which comes with a narrative.

To what extent are China and Russia using this digital sector to challenge the presence of their American, European, and other competitors?

CE - From the point of view of competition with third-country equipment manufacturers, particularly in Senegal, there is no equivalent to China and Huawei. The Turks, the Indians, and the French, who are very present in other sectors, are not players in the field of digital equipment. No one is in a position to compete with China and Huawei for the moment.

Institut Montaigne - Orange ?

CE - Sonatel-Orange is a Senegalese company that is 42.3 percent owned by the Orange group. It is an operator and, therefore, a company that leases infrastructure capacity to a third-party operator and operates the digital infrastructure it has installed, offering subscriptions or services that use this network. Orange will therefore buy Chinese or European equipment to equip its networks but is not an equipment manufacturer. As previously stated, Chinese companies have been present in Africa almost since the beginning of the development of digital networks. As such, they do not compete directly with players such as the United States. On the other hand, the arrival of 5G networks has crystallized tensions between the US and China over data security and espionage risks, and this bilateral competition has been exported to other territories, such as Senegal. What is important to remember is that China’s presence in telecom equipment is a source of concern, especially for the United States, as it lies at the heart of computer networks and digital data security issues. This is linked to the US strategy of reducing Huawei’s global presence and impact. The Chinese company is already present and wants to keep its markets because it has already lost a great deal in the Anglo-Saxon countries and in Europe. There are, therefore, major economic stakes for the company in African territories, and this puts it at the heart of clashes between equipment manufacturers. The main argument, beyond price or performance, is security in relation to the risks of cyberespionage, data theft, fast-spreading cyberattacks, and, more broadly, digital predation. There’s a whole argument that buying Chinese equipment is risky because it’s not as secure as American, European, or South Korean equipment.

KL - Given that Russia positions itself as a producer of narratives, there is a natural, or at least logical, inclination to consider that any Western presence in the field of telecommunications simply demonstrates the continuation of the colonial experience into the twenty-first century and into cyberspace. As a result, any Western presence in telecommunications can be seen as a target, not just for Russia but also for the political groups and African governments that have appropriated this Russian "software/story." For France, this is particularly worrying because one of the main assets of the French presence in the region is precisely Orange (CE: "even if most Orange companies in West Africa are local subsidiaries"; KL: "which often remain linked to Orange through capital relations"). Indeed, it’s easy to imagine how Orange could be the target of certain discourses, themselves underpinned by the "ideological grammar" I mentioned earlier.

How do the authorities and populations of African countries receive or welcome this Russian and Chinese digital influence?

KL – The short answer is that this is not my area of expertise [laughs]. I’m interested in how Russia uses cyberspace as a space for power projection and in how Africa has become a territory for this projection-in other words, how the object "Africa" (with all its accompanying vagueness) has become a new element of Russian discourse at the service of the Russian regime and its own ambitions. The reception by African elites is not my area but that of my Africanist colleagues.

On the one hand, this competition is beneficial for the political players and the government, as they can have more projects financed, and thus benefit from showcasing all the new projects on the territory in order to enhance the country’s development and its rise to international prominence. On the other hand, these major projects, such as the 5G network or the construction of several data centers to host data for the subregion, also enable the return of strong state planning and the promotion of the actions of the current president. There is, therefore, an instrumentalization of these competitions between powers such as China and others to say that the country is in its emergence phase, or even a country that has emerged (a key term of Senegalese President Macky Sall’s two terms in office, 2012-2024). This is likely to send a very strong political message. The data center to be inaugurated in 2021 in Diamniadio (Senegal) in partnership with China, using Huawei equipment and loans from the China Exim Bank, illustrates the typical discourse: "Look, with China’s help, we’re going to stop storing our data in Europe. We’ll relocate it here. We’re not calling on a private player to manage it. We, the state, are becoming autonomous players, managing this strategic infrastructure."

IM – Thank you for these valuable and very interesting observations.

[Additional note from Jonathan Guiffard: The discourse of African authorities, whether permissive or not with respect to Russian and Chinese influence, makes little mention of the subject of digital technology as such. It is often linked to the more general discourse on development and the logics of emergence evoked by Charlotte Escorne above, but rarely in the context of a strategic vision. It is likely that Russia’s allies willingly accept the narrative and the means that go with it, particularly to replicate authoritarian models of governance in the digital space. In the case of Chinese equipment, the reception is all the more positive in that the infrastructure is inexpensive and financed by Chinese loans. If this funding is curtailed, as has been the case since the COVID-19 pandemic period, it is likely that other equipment manufacturers will be able to challenge Chinese market share, particularly as American pressure increases and cyberattacks occur against these same, less well-protected types of infrastructure].

Kevin Limonier holds a doctorate in geopolitics from the Institut Français de Géopolitique and is deputy director of the GEODE project as well as head of the CORUSCANT research project, which focuses on current changes in Russia. He specializes in Russian digital policies and the Kremlin’s foreign policy in Europe, Asia, and Africa. His books include Ru.net: géopolitique du cyberespace russophone (2018) and the article "Russia’s African Toolkit: Digital Influence and Entrepreneurs of Influence" (2021) with Marlène Laruelle.

Charlotte Escorne is a doctoral student at the Institut Français de Géopolitique and an associate researcher with the GEODE project. She specializes in telecom equipment manufacturers’ strategies in Africa, with a particular focus on Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire, where she is studying the implementation of and competition around the 5G network. She notably contributed to the book edited by Xavier Auregan and Thierry Pairault, L’Afrique et ses présences chinoises (2024), for the chapter entitled "Présences chinoises dans les télécommunications."

Copyright image : © SEYLLOU / AFP
Senegalese Prime Minister Mohammed Dionne and Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao in Diamniadio, Senegal, May 7, 2017.

Copyright SEYLLOU / AFP

Le Premier ministre sénégalais Mohammed Dionne et le vice-président chinois Li Yuanchao à Diamniadio, au Sénégal, le 7 mai 2017.