What Africa Really Thinks about the War in Ukraine

Many African countries are suffering from the consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: disrupted wheat supplies, soaring prices for industrial goods and raw materials, as well as a shifting of the world’s attention from the needs of the Global South. At the same time, African diplomacy on the Ukraine war has been mostly muted. While a lot of media coverage is given to the handful of countries with close ties to Moscow, most African states have chosen not to voice a strong position on the war, focusing on priorities closer to home. Strategic considerations and the need to appease international partners, including China, are also driving this ambivalence — a reality still poorly understood by many Western policymakers.

This week on The Horn, Alan is joined by Dr. Hassan Khannenje, director at the HORN International Institute for Strategic Studies based in Nairobi. They talk about how the continent views Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and why not all African countries have bought into the West’s perspective on the war. They discuss Africa’s place in the world order and how its foreign policy is driven by a mixture of both ideological commitment to non-alignment and strategic interests, as it continues to tread a careful line on the Ukraine war.

For more on the Ukraine war, check out Crisis Group’s extensive analysis on our Ukraine country page.

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