Clerics vs the Kremlin: A Battle in Africa

‘And Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, "Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand."’ 

This quote, taken from Matthew’s gospel, exemplifies the issue many African nations are facing. Democracies across the continent threaten to fall as Russia seeks to divide societies, supporting military and autocratic regimes and ultimately driving its own geopolitical gain.

Priest Celebrating Mass Holding Bible Up, Kinshasa, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Carmel Nsenga

But, and as it seems rather on topic, faith leaders on the continent can play a role in addressing Russia’s rise. But they require the correct support to do so. 

The Russian efforts to divide societies operate within cyberspace and the real world, aiming to penetrate all levels of society. On the one hand, varied military and militia support in the Central African Republic and Mali are deployed to inflame divisions. In some instances, in Sudan, Russia reportedly armed the two opposing sides. Disinformation campaigns compound confusion and division, spreading anti-democratic content, stoking violence and promoting Russian intervention.

Russian assistance in coups has brought demonstrable success to itself both geopolitically and financially.

Putin’s aim is to rebuild African countries and restructure their alliances for the benefit of Russia. In destabilising them, he opens the opportunity for new leaders, and in some cases already appointed leaders, to emerge from the rubble, whom he then courts with security guarantees, binding them to the will of the Kremlin. As such, as part of Russia’s zero-sum foreign policy, the West is undermined, frozen out of vital regions. 

Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, all of whom experienced coups in the last five years, received Russian support and continue to do so. In late 2023, all three states broke away from ECOWAS, forming their own Russian-leaning Alliance of Sahel States.

The support Russian mercenaries give to the junta leaders also grants Moscow access to mines in the region, the produce of which has not only been used to bypass Western imposed sanctions following Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine in 2022, allowing the Kremlin to continue its war, but have gifted Russia a strong global economic position owning access to rare minerals which are vital in global supply chains.

Russia’s steps in Africa must be seen as nothing more than a threat to international and UK national security. Efforts should be made to counter them. 

Faith leaders are an underappreciated and underused asset in this fight. With a history of conflict resolution and information dissemination, they are an efficient and viable source to counter Russian division efforts and prevent the snowballing of Russian influence.

The focus in African countries should be on pursuing peacekeeping efforts and ensuring conflict resolution measures are in place in order to prevent coups from breaking out. The issue is, however, that governments are not in a viable position to do so. Corruption is rife and less than half of all Africans trust government and affiliated institutions like the courts and the police. 

Faith leaders, on the other hand, are highly trusted. With 95% of all Africans associated with religion and two-thirds of all trusting in religious institutions, religious leaders offer a viable pathway as a fair and authoritative voice for peace and truth. The trust, no doubt, has developed as a result of perceived impartiality and of working at a community level right from the grassroots up to government. 

The position of trust granted to faith leaders has historically given them a unique position to act in positions such as mediators to resolve conflicts that have broken out or are breaking out. The Inter-religious Council of Sierra Leone, for instance, played a vital role in mediation between two warring factions during the Sierra Leone civil war, which led to the Lomé Peace Agreement in 1999. The World Bank has acknowledged the work of faith leaders in this realm as ‘crucial’. 

Russia’s use of disinformation to compound divisions is a similarly serious threat and has wreaked havoc on peacekeeping operations. 84% of Africans use social media as their main source of information, exposing them to much-reported Russian disinformation campaigns. Faith leaders, with their ability to speak from a trusted platform of authority, sit in a strong position to counter this head-on. Evidence indicates that Africans, in particular in the Sub-Saharan region, attend places of worship more regularly than most other countries across the globe, and also that people across Africa are in contact more with their religious leaders than with any other type of public official. 

Religious institutions have been pivotal in disseminating factual information for the great good of the public. Examples such as informing on Ebola and encouraging adherence to government policy during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrate this. Furthermore, work against misinformation has already been seen, notably at a Presbyterian church in Ghana, which spent money on gathering data on misinformation and then spent time using the Church’s social media to debunk it.

The UK government must view work with religious leaders, in particular in Africa, as part of a wider strategic framework to counter the rise of Russia and ultimately as a unit of national security.

The Strategic Defence Review and National Security Strategy laid out the need for the UK to ‘actively prepare’ for conflict and set out plans to expand the UK’s military. But discussion on prevention and peacebuilding was lacking. The National Security Strategy also acknowledged that Africa was becoming ‘an increasingly geopolitically competitive continent’, but offered no concrete measures to develop resilience to the external growing threat. 

With a pillar of the UK’s National Security Strategy being ‘strength abroad’, supporting faith leaders in peacebuilding and democratic resilience in Africa ought to be crucial. Money should be invested both in counter-disinformation efforts via churches and in supporting faith leaders as they manage conflicts, which, if not resolved, can escalate and pose wider regional threats. If proactively supported, these measures could play a vital role not only in furthering the UK’s soft power and influence abroad but stemming the malign influence of the Kremlin.