Russia Talks Multipolarity. But Where Is Africa’s Voice in Moscow?
By V. L. K. Djokoto
For the Accra Evening News
There is something rather curious about the way Russia speaks about its relationship with Africa. Moscow talks, with growing confidence, about a changing international order, about multipolarity, sovereignty and the emergence of a world no longer organised principally around the interests of a handful of Western capitals. Yet, for all the language of strategic partnership and renewed friendship with Africa, there remains a rather basic weakness in the relationship which is too often overlooked: Africa has remarkably little media presence inside Russia itself.
This may sound like a technical question concerning newspapers, broadcasters and accreditation, but it is in fact much more important than that. A serious bilateral relationship cannot simply consist of presidents meeting, ministers signing agreements and businesses attending conferences while the societies themselves remain poorly acquainted with one another. If Russia and Africa are genuinely to become partners in a new international order, then the traffic between them must run in both directions, and that includes the traffic of information, journalism and ideas.
The point was made rather clearly some years ago. By 2020, Russia hosted approximately 300 foreign media bureaus representing some 60 countries and around 800 foreign correspondents, while only two African news organisations, from Egypt and Morocco, had bureaus in the Russian Federation. Six years later, the fact that the question continues to be raised is a reminder that the problem is not simply an historical curiosity but a continuing weakness in the architecture of Russia-Africa relations.
And this is where Russia’s language about multipolarity deserves a little more scrutiny. If multipolarity is to mean anything beyond the redistribution of geopolitical influence between states, it must also mean the existence of multiple perspectives through which societies understand the world. It is not enough to say that Africa deserves a greater voice in global affairs if Africans are still largely dependent upon Russian, European or American institutions to tell them what is happening inside Russia.
The same principle applies in reverse. Russia cannot reasonably complain about Western media dominance in Africa while being satisfied with a situation in which African journalism has such a limited presence within Russia. If Moscow believes that Africans have sometimes received an incomplete picture of Russia through Western media, then one of the most effective answers would be remarkably straightforward: allow more African journalists to report from Russia themselves.
There is nothing particularly radical about this idea. A Ghanaian journalist based in Moscow would not have to become an advocate for Russia, just as a Russian journalist based in Accra would not have to become an advocate for Ghana. The value of having journalists from different societies is precisely that they bring different questions, different experiences and different ways of interpreting the same events, and in a healthy international relationship that should be regarded as an asset rather than a threat.
This is particularly important because there remains, within parts of Russia’s institutional approach to international information, an inheritance of the old Soviet conception of media as closely connected to geopolitical influence and the contest between competing narratives. One can understand why such a mentality developed, particularly given Russia’s complicated history with Western powers and Western media, but the world has changed rather considerably since the Soviet Union disappeared. The modern media landscape is not simply a battlefield between states; it is also one of the principal bridges through which ordinary people come to understand societies that are otherwise distant from them.
Russia therefore has a considerable opportunity to demonstrate that its vision of multipolarity is about more than geopolitical competition. If Moscow wishes to persuade African societies that it represents a different approach to international relations, then it should be confident enough to allow Africans to observe Russia directly, report it independently and form their own conclusions. A Russian-produced documentary about Africa may be interesting, but it is not a substitute for an African journalist spending several years in Moscow and telling African readers what Russia looks and feels like from there.
The distinction is important because presence is not the same thing as representation. Russia has become increasingly interested in communicating directly with African audiences, and Russian media organisations have developed partnerships, broadcasting initiatives and other forms of cooperation with African outlets. That is entirely legitimate, and indeed it is sensible for Russia to want to explain its policies and society to Africans, but the relationship becomes unbalanced when the movement of information is overwhelmingly from Russia towards Africa rather than between Russia and Africa.
A genuinely bilateral media relationship would look rather different. It would mean Ghanaian journalists reporting from Moscow and St Petersburg, Nigerian correspondents travelling through Russian industrial regions, South African broadcasters interviewing Russian academics and entrepreneurs, and African cultural journalists writing about Russian literature, cinema, music and contemporary life. It would mean African audiences hearing directly from Russians themselves, rather than encountering Russia primarily through the competing interpretations of Moscow, London, Paris or Washington.
There is a rather simple principle at work here: you cannot complain about an information monopoly while failing to create the conditions for information pluralism. If Russia believes that the Western media environment has produced an excessively narrow understanding of Russia in Africa, then the answer should not merely be to increase Russian media output for African audiences. The more convincing answer is to increase the number of African eyes, ears and notebooks inside Russia.
That would also serve Russia’s own interests. A Ghanaian businessman considering a Russian partner needs more than a diplomatic communiqué, just as a Russian company considering an investment in Ghana needs more than an official statement from Accra. Businesses, universities, investors, students and tourists all depend upon a basic understanding of how another society works, and journalism remains one of the most important ways of acquiring that understanding.
The weakness, however, is not entirely Russia’s responsibility. Africa has often been too passive about building its own capacity to observe the wider world, and African governments sometimes speak about the importance of African narratives without providing the institutions, resources and professional opportunities required to produce them. If Ghana wants a serious relationship with Russia, Ghanaian media should have the capacity to report regularly from Russia; if Nigeria wants deeper economic engagement with Moscow, Nigerian journalists should be able to understand the Russian economy from within it; and if South Africa wants BRICS to become more than a diplomatic arrangement, its media should be capable of explaining what is happening inside the organisation’s most important political centres.
Africa needs its own eyes in Moscow. Russia, equally, needs its own eyes in Accra, Abuja, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Cairo and across the continent, because neither side can properly understand the other through occasional summits and carefully prepared official statements. The relationship becomes stronger when journalists, academics, artists, entrepreneurs and ordinary citizens move between the two societies and acquire the confidence to speak about one another from experience.
This is why the next phase of Russia-Africa relations should place greater emphasis on reciprocal media access. Journalist exchanges, correspondent programmes, newsroom partnerships, fellowships, translation initiatives and more practical arrangements for long-term accreditation would do considerably more to deepen public understanding than another collection of diplomatic declarations. Conferences are useful, but they cannot substitute for correspondents; summits are valuable, but they cannot substitute for newsrooms; and press releases cannot substitute for journalism.
There is also a broader lesson here for the idea of multipolarity itself. A world with several great powers but only a narrow number of institutions through which those powers are observed is not quite as pluralistic as it claims to be. Genuine multipolarity should mean not only several centres of political and economic power, but several centres of interpretation, knowledge and intellectual production, allowing societies to encounter one another without permanently depending upon intermediaries.
Russia is right that the international system is changing, and Africa is increasingly unwilling to remain merely an object in other people’s geopolitical calculations. But precisely because the world is becoming more plural, Russia must ensure that its relationship with Africa reflects the pluralism it advocates, rather than reproducing an older model in which powerful institutions speak and others principally receive. The strongest partnerships are not those in which everyone tells the same story; they are those in which people are confident enough to hear different stories and still remain committed to working together.
There is, in the end, a very simple test. If Russia genuinely believes that Africa should be an equal partner in the emerging multipolar order, then an African journalist in Moscow should not be an unusual sight, just as a Russian journalist in Accra should not be. The road between Russia and Africa should carry traffic in both directions, because bilateralism without reciprocity is little more than a conversation in which one party does most of the talking.
The measure of a truly multipolar world will therefore not be how frequently the word multipolarity appears in diplomatic communiqués. It will be whether people from different parts of the world have the opportunity to observe one another directly, ask difficult questions, exchange ideas and form their own judgments without somebody else permanently standing between them. If Russia wants Africa to see it differently, perhaps the first step is to allow more Africans to see Russia for themselves.