African Initiative: Russia’s Post-Wagner Influence Goes Local
After the death of Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in August 2023, Russia’s African presence evolved along two tracks. Afrikansky Korpus , brought under the Ministry of Defence, absorbed Gruppa Wagner’s military footprint. Less visible yet strategically significant is African Initiative (Afrikanskaya Initiativa) , a Moscow-based agency launched in 2023 that embeds pro-Russian influence inside African civic life through NGOs, journalism schools, sport and health initiatives. Its advantage is credibility: narratives carried by locals are harder to dismiss as foreign. Afrikansky Korpus inherited Wagner’s guns; African Initiative inherited its narratives. Burkina Faso illustrates the method. During the severe 2023 dengue epidemic, a Russian medical delegation delivered screening kits and insecticides to Ouagadougou. At the same time, according to a joint assessment by the European External Action Service (EEAS), France’s foreign-interference watchdog VIGINUM and the Un...