How Russia Weaponises Food Security in Africa

Far from alleviating hunger, Russia’s grain exports to many African states have made it worse. For the Kremlin, the grain trade with Africa is a means of securing the loyalty of autocratic regimes and expanding Russia’s geopolitical influence. Ukraine’s ‘grain diplomacy’ follows an entirely different logic.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has had a devastating effect on food security on the African continent. In the period from 2022 to 2024, the number of starving people there grew from 272.9 to 306.5 million. This hunger is directly related to the war in Ukraine. The Black Sea region has long been a major source of grain for Africa. In 2020 at least 15 African countries imported more than half of their wheat from Ukraine or Russia. Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian ports in the six months after the invasion saw Ukrainian grain exports drop drastically. While the flow of those exports gradually resumed after the blockade ended, in many African countries local food security has continued to worsen despite a downward trend in global grain prices since 2023. The reasons for this are rooted in how Russia uses the grain trade with Africa to pursue its geopolitical agenda.

Russia’s ‘return to Africa’

Russia’s share in Africa's total wheat imports has increased from 13 to 32 per cent over the last two decades. The increase in Ukraine’s wheat exports to Africa over the same period has been much more modest – from 5 to 8 per cent. Russia has also diversified its wheat exports geographically across the continent, mostly throughout the Sub-Saharan region. It used the 2022 blockade of Ukraine’s ports to become even more dominant on African grain markets. This expansion must be seen in the context of a Russian ‘return to Africa’ after relations with the West began to turn sour after Putin’s ‘Munich speech’ in 2007. In renewing its diplomatic relations with African states, Russia built on the legacy of Soviet influence on the continent during the Cold War. Since the start of the war in Ukraine in 2014 there has been a notable increase in Russia’s presence in Africa. The Wagner Group – a pro-Kremlin mercenary force founded in the same year by Yevgeny Prigozhin – forged strong political, economic and military ties on the continent. In countries like Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sudan it helped prop up non-democratic regimes in exchange for valuable natural resources. After the group’s mutiny in Russia in June 2023 and the death of Prigozhin in suspicious circumstances, the Russian government took over the group’s multi-billion-dollar operations in Africa. If anything, Russia’s ties to the countries where Wagner formerly operated have become stronger since then.

Nowhere is the connection between Wagner's activities and deteriorating food security more visible than in Mali. Beginning in 2021, the company supported the military junta that came to power in the country through a coup. Mercenaries actively participated in counter-rebel operations, supplying weapons and training Malian soldiers. Data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization shows that between 2021 and 2023, the share of undernourished people in the country nearly doubled and the number of starving people increased by 81 per cent. The increases in these indicators for the whole of Africa over the same period were much lower: 6 and 11 per cent respectively.

Delivering grain but compounding hunger

Why has food security worsened in many African countries that rely on Russian grain imports? As the map below shows, there is a correlation between relatively high shares of Russian wheat imports and a low score on the democracy index since 2014. Like the Wagner Group before it, Russia cultivates relations with autocratic governments, often in politically unstable contexts where there are no pro-poor policies or governance mechanisms to ensure a fair distribution of food exports. States with autocratic governments are also more vulnerable to food riots. Food is just one area where Russia keeps these regimes in a state of dependency. The geopolitical effects of this overreliance on Russia are clear: African Countries that depend on Russia for their food supply tended to abstain or vote against United Nations General Assembly resolutions condemning Russia's war in Ukraine.

All of this shows how Russia is exploiting the food security vulnerability of many African states for its own geopolitical ends. The grain trade with Africa has become a weapon in the Kremlin’s arsenal which it uses to get African countries on side, weaken Western influence in the region, and secure valuable natural resources as a buffer against Western sanctions. This process has been supported by the exit of multinational commodity traders from the Russian grain export market in recent years. Large state-owned operators have filled the breach. They now oversee critical railway and port infrastructure, allowing the Kremlin to increase its control over grain flows and shape export geography, with a growing focus on BRICS+ countries.

Ukraine’s ‘grain diplomacy’ offensive

Ukrainian grain exports to Africa follow a very different logic. While Russia exploits grain dependencies to secure support among African elites for the Kremlin’s position in the UN, Ukraine has been focusing on combatting hunger in Africa since 2022. In response to Russia's expansion on the African grain market, it launched the humanitarian programme ‘Grain from Ukraine’, headed by the UN World Food Programme. As a tool of ‘grain diplomacy’ between Ukraine and the Global South, it is the antithesis of Russia’s weaponisation of grain. The initiative delivers humanitarian food aid to countries in Africa and the Middle East, with a focus on African countries with low to moderate food security. Since 2022, more than 16 million people have been supported by it. So although a much smaller player than Russia on the African grain market, Ukraine contributes far more to food security and offers an alternative to the Russian grain exports that keep some African countries in the Kremlin’s orbit.

Dr. Pavlo Martyshev is a research fellow at the Kyiv School of Economics (Ukraine) and a non-resident fellow at the Competence Network Interdisciplinary Ukrainian Studies Frankfurt (Oder) – Berlin (KIU).