South Sudan’s leader will visit Russia in September

South Sudanese President Salva Kiir will visit Moscow for the first time before the end of September. Vedomosti was informed about this by two informed diplomatic sources. At the end of July, the Vice President of South Sudan, Taban Deng Gai, visited Russia and took part in the Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg. No specific agreements with the Russian leadership were reported at that time.

South Sudan is the youngest country to be a member of the UN. It accounted for up to 75% of Sudan’s oil production before the separation of the south from the north in 2011. According to the country’s oil minister Puot Kang Chol, South Sudan’s production in April 2023 was 169,141 bbl/d. In 2013 and 2016 The country experienced outbreaks of civil war, which were resolved by 2020 through UN mediation. Russia also participated in peacekeeping operations in South Sudan, providing assistance in the delivery of humanitarian supplies by helicopter. According to the World Bank, 80.2% of the country’s population lives below the poverty line. In 2023, about 9.4 million people, or 76% of the population, will need humanitarian assistance, which is half a million more than in 2022.

Vedomosti sent a request to the Russian Foreign Ministry, as well as the presidential administration of South Sudan.

South Sudan is in a permanent economic and political crisis, says Grigory Lukyanov, a researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It chronically needs injections from external sponsors – the UN, the African Union, the West, China. As such, a modern economy has not formed there, the population uses livestock instead of currency, a group of former warlords has power, they conflict with each other for rent in the form of taxes and foreign humanitarian aid, the expert explains. According to him, with the outbreak of the civil war in Sudan, South Sudan strengthened ties with its neighbors in the southeast and east – with Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya, the latter has access to the sea. “These countries are beneficiaries of the “reversal” of South Sudan’s oil flows; their elites are actively in contact. They are lobbying to attract Russian interest in this country. Moscow is losing interest in Sudan, whose ability to fulfill promises for a military base on the Red Sea is minimal. Ugandans, Ethiopians, Kenyans need help in building infrastructure for transporting South Sudanese resources and ensuring security,” says Lukyanov. The expert notes that for Russian business, South Sudan is “terra incognita” against the backdrop of enormous risks; it has not yet entered there, with the exception of the security business.

“Without guarantees of support and security from the state, Russian business is unlikely to dare to infiltrate there. Investments in infrastructure are questionable and rational only if risks are shared with Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia. South Sudanese oil is now more interesting for supplies within the continent, rather than outside,” believes Lukyanov.

According to a Vedomosti source familiar with the situation in the region, the President of South Sudan is ready to receive help from the West, China, and Russia. “Representatives of the South Sudanese elites decided that while Wagner was in limbo, the time had come to contact directly the Russian leadership on security issues. Previously, Wagner’s lobbying potential might have been enough to prevent South Sudan from having such direct relations with the Russian state,” Vedomosti’s source believes.

In addition to the President of South Sudan, the President of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, may also visit Russia. In mid-June, Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov announced that Mbasogo would arrive in Moscow on June 27. After Yevgeny Prigozhin’s rebellion on June 23–24, the President of Equatorial Guinea rescheduled planned visits to Belarus and Russia. On September 7, Mbasogo nevertheless arrived in Minsk, but the announcement of a subsequent visit to Moscow was not published at the time the note was submitted. Mbasogo has already visited Russia – in 2019 he was at the first Russia-Africa summit in Sochi, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The second Russia-Africa summit at the end of July 2023 was attended by the country’s Vice President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue. Vedomosti sent a request to the presidential administration of Equatorial Guinea.

Equatorial Guinea is an oil exporter and has, by African standards, a high standard of living. Its authorities are also interested in assistance in conducting geological exploration for bauxite deposits; the country is actively promoting the mining and export of industrial diamonds, says Natalya Piskunova, associate professor at the Faculty of World Politics of Moscow State University. Russia may be interested in using the ports of this country under sanctions, Piskunova believes.