Borders Ending Nowhere: The Geopolitical Imaginaries and Practices of Russia’s Spheres of Interest in Africa

Russia has been involved in Africa since Tsarist times, but its involvement has ebbed and flowed. Nonetheless, the idea of Africa as an open political landscape in which Russia could act as a great power has been relatively persistent, often in connection with the domestic resurfacing of civilisational discourses on Russian exceptionalism. Recently, there has been much concern in the West about the expansion of Russian projection in Africa, with some suggesting that Moscow is establishing a sphere of influence. Our analysis of Russia’s geopolitical imagination and its subsequent practices does not lead us to conclude that a deliberate attempt to establish a genuine sphere of influence is underway. Instead, we see an opportunistic endeavour to assert and shape a geographically continuous sphere of interest (Russian: sfera interesov), negotiating with local partners forms of collaboration that reflect and prompt change in the international system.