President of Equatorial Guinea to visit Russia

Equatorial Guinean President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo will visit Russia, presumably next week, two diplomatic sources told Vedomosti. Vedomosti sent a request to the press secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov. Previously, the President of Equatorial Guinea has already visited Russia – in 2019 he attended the first Russia-Africa summit in Sochi, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Then the parties expressed hope for the development of economic cooperation – in particular, Mbasogo stressed that “Russia should be the first partner of Equatorial Guinea.” In turn, Putin thanked his African counterpart for the support that Equatorial Guinea provides to Russian initiatives at international platforms, including the UN.

Russia in the 2000s became one of the partners of this country in the field of military-technical cooperation. Even before 2014, with the participation and under the project of a number of Sevastopol enterprises, several warships for the fleet of this republic were built at Bulgarian shipyards, says a source close to the system of military-technical cooperation. The sailors of Equatorial Guinea completed their training for service on these ships after the reunification of Crimea and Russia. In addition, the country was supplied with an Il-76 military transport aircraft with new engines and a number of other products of the Russian defense industry, Vedomosti’s interlocutor continues. Equatorial Guinea is a relatively sparsely populated (1.7 million people) but rich oil-producing country. It is located near the centers of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea. This forces the country, located partly on the continent, and partly on the island, to take care of its security.

Equatorial Guinea is one of the richest and most prosperous countries in Africa, notes Rakhimbek Bobokhonov, senior researcher at the Center for Civilizational and Regional Studies at the Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Despite the modest territory and population, in Equatorial Guinea, due to tight government control, there are no serious threats to internal security, the GDP per capita is high – the country is in the top 3 in Africa along with the Seychelles and Mauritius and has a positive trade balance. Equatorial Guinea owes its wealth, among other things, to large-scale oil and gas reserves, Bobokhonov says. Previously, the government of Equatorial Guinea focused on the West, to which it sold its liquefied natural gas, but now there is a turn towards cooperation with India, China, Pakistan and developing countries. According to Bobokhonov, now Equatorial Guinea wants to get closer to Russia and restore the level of relations that was maintained under the USSR. This clearly illustrates the fact that the prosperous African countries are gradually moving away from their exclusive orientation to the West and are developing cooperation with Russia, Bobokhonov points out.