Russia ranks last among major global powers in how positively Africans view its influence on their countries, despite its growing military and diplomatic footprint across the continent, a sweeping new survey has found.
The findings, published Monday by Afrobarometer, a pan-African nonpartisan research network, draw on face-to-face interviews conducted across 38 African countries in 2024 and 2025, covering tens of thousands of citizens.
Only 36% of respondents across the 38 countries described Russia’s economic and political influence as somewhat or very positive, while 23% viewed it negatively. A plurality of 42% declined to offer any assessment at all.
Those numbers place Russia well behind every other major power measured. Positive perceptions of Russia stand far below those recorded for China at 62%, regional economic organisations at 56%, the African Union (AU) at 55%, the United States at 52%, and the European Union (EU) at 50%.
The gap between Russia and China is particularly striking given that Moscow has invested heavily in reshaping its image across the continent since the early 2000s, deploying military cooperation agreements, private security contractors, and diplomatic outreach as alternatives to the trade and infrastructure-led engagement model favoured by Beijing.
Country-level results reveal a sharply divided continent. The survey found that Malians are by far Russia’s most enthusiastic supporters, with 88% holding positive views, a figure that reflects Mali’s deep security ties with Russian-backed forces following the departure of French troops. Cameroon came second at 60%, followed by Guinea-Bissau and Côte d’Ivoire, both at 55%. At the other end, fewer than one in six respondents in Zambia, Lesotho, Eswatini, and Botswana held positive views of Russian influence, with Botswana recording the lowest figure at just 13%.
On the Russia-Ukraine war, which is now in its fourth year, the survey found that most Africans want their governments to stay out of it. Seven in 10 Africans said they had heard about the war, and among those who had, 72% said their country should remain neutral. Mali was the only surveyed country where a majority favoured supporting one side, with 72% backing Russia.
Afrobarometer noted that those who hold favourable views of Russian influence are somewhat more likely to support military rule as an acceptable form of government, a relationship that is statistically significant in 11 of the 38 surveyed countries.
The Afrobarometer Round 10 surveys were conducted between January 2024 and 2025, with nationally representative samples in each country and margins of error of plus or minus two to three percentage points at the 95% confidence level. Ghana is among the 38 countries covered in the survey.
