Russia plans to deploy communications and remote-sensing satellites in three West African countries led by juntas that have already cut ties with the United States and European allies and sought military help from the Kremlin to contain Islamic militants.
Officials from Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and the Russian Space Agency announced they signed a partnership agreement in the Malian capital on Monday to strengthen security, manage natural disasters and improve internet access.
The partnership will see Russia’s space agency help the three countries build communications systems across their vast territories, and also deploy satellites designed to monitor border areas where Islamist militants linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State roam freely and regularly attack military and civilians.
Officials provided few details about the deal, such as how much it would cost West African governments.
The partnership is the latest sign of Russia’s expanding influence in the region, where military-led governments have turned their backs on the United States and European nations after a decade of military cooperation against militant groups.
Russia has provided the beleaguered forces with military instructors, helicopters, weapons and mercenaries from the Wagner Group, but has so far been unable to retake large swathes of territory from the Islamist militants.
In Mali, an al-Qaida affiliate killed at least 50 militants in the capital, Bamako, last week while Wagner mercenaries were stationed a few miles away. In Burkina Faso, Western officials estimate that Islamist militants roam freely through two-thirds of the country. In Niger, civilian and soldier deaths have soared since rebels seized power in a coup last July.
Yet officials in the three countries insist that only they can restore order, have ignored calls for elections, and have claimed with little evidence that they have made more progress in defeating the rebels than the civilian governments they ousted.
They also left the regional alliance they had been a part of for decades, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and instead formed their own security alliance last year, known by the acronym AES.
“With Russia we have a more sincere and reactive relationship that is better suited to the current challenges of the AES,” Niger’s Communications Minister Sidi Mohamed Lariou told a news conference in Bamako on Monday after meetings with government officials from the three countries and representatives of Russian satellite communications company Glavcosmos.
Ilya Tarasenko, head of Glavkosmos, a subsidiary of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, said at a press conference on Monday that the partnership was “highly important” for improving security on the two countries’ borders.
Lariu said the satellites would also help countries manage the effects of climate change, which has had devastating effects in West Africa and other parts of the continent, where floods have killed more than 1,000 people and affected four million in recent weeks.
Extremists linked to Islamic State and al-Qaida have turned swathes of West Africa into a global terror epicenter, killing tens of thousands of civilians in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, sealing off dozens of towns and villages and cutting off access to key roads that are the economic lifeline of the three landlocked countries.
But as the attacks continue, West African officials have acknowledged that it could take years before the Russian satellite is operational. During a visit to Moscow in March, Malian Economy Minister Arseni Sanou said the satellite would take at least four years to build and launch, and that dozens of Malian experts would need to be trained to operate it.
Sanou said in March that Russian remote-sensing satellites would also help map Mali’s mineral resources, a West African country with vast gold reserves that Western officials and analysts say the Kremlin-backed paramilitary group Wagner is coveting.
Officials signed the partnership on Monday but did not disclose a timeline for the satellite launch. A copy of the memorandum of understanding signed by the West African and Russian governments and seen by The New York Times includes “training of national personnel in space activities” and notes that the initial phase of the partnership will last five years.
