Italy and Russia Are Betting on Africa. The Continent Should Play Its Hand Wisely.

By Danilo Desiderio

Africa is no longer simply a talking point at international summits. It is fast becoming one of the world’s most fiercely contested economic frontiers – and two very different industrial powers, Italy and Russia, are both moving to deepen their stakes in the continent, each with its own calculus, and each with its own implicit offer.

Italy is the world’s eighth-largest manufacturing economy and its fourth-largest goods exporter. In 2024, it shipped more than €20 billion worth of goods to African markets – a figure that reflects not just commercial ambition but a deliberate pivot in Italian trade policy.

A new business guide published by Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Destinazione Africa” (Destination Africa), makes that pivot explicit. It identifies six priority sectors where Italian companies are encouraged to pursue African opportunities: agro-industry, aerospace, renewable energy, digital innovation, infrastructure, and construction.

The guide does more than catalogue opportunities. It reframes Italy’s role. Africa, it insists, should not be viewed merely as a destination for exports – a passive recipient of goods manufactured elsewhere from raw materials extracted on the continent.

It should be understood as a partner in industrial co-development. That is a more ambitious framing than the extractive logic that has long characterized economic relations between Europe and Africa, and it deserves serious scrutiny.

Russia’s Parallel Gambit

Russia is making a strikingly similar move, albeit from a different starting point and with different tools. Moscow ranks among the world’s top twenty exporters, generating more than US$425 billion in exports in 2024, led by energy, metals, fertilizers, and heavy industrial inputs.

Its manufacturing base is narrower than Italy’s – concentrated in energy technologies, heavy machinery, aerospace, and defense – but it retains significant industrial capacity, and its appetite for African engagement is growing.

Russia’s Ministry of Economic Development recently announced plans to expand trade and economic cooperation with African countries through a network of new intergovernmental economic commissions, a dedicated investment fund, and the development of additional logistics corridors linking Russian and African markets.

Priority sectors identified by Russian policymakers read like a close echo of Italy’s list: the agro-industrial complex, energy resources, mining technologies, fertilizers, and the broader deployment of Russian industrial and engineering technologies.

The convergence is striking. Two countries with deeply different political profiles, geopolitical alignments, and industrial histories are independently arriving at the same conclusion: that Africa represents one of the most significant economic opportunities of the coming decades.

The simultaneous interest of multiple global powers – Italy, Russia, China, the Gulf states, the United States, and others – in deepening economic ties with Africa is, in aggregate, a source of leverage.

Why Africa, Why Now

The structural logic is hard to dispute. Africa’s population is growing faster than that of any other continent. Its cities are expanding at a pace that will require enormous investment in housing, transport, energy, and digital infrastructure.

A rapidly expanding middle class is generating new demand across food systems, consumer goods, and financial services. And the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), by progressively dismantling tariff and non-tariff barriers between member states, is gradually transforming what was once a patchwork of fragmented national markets into something approaching a single continental economic space.

For external partners, the AfCFTA changes the calculus in a meaningful way. Gaining a foothold in one African market no longer means access to that market alone – it potentially means access to an integrated production and distribution network spanning more than fifty countries.

That is a prospect that concentrates minds in boardrooms and government ministries alike.

Agro-industry stands out as the single most strategically important sector. Africa already accounts for a large share of global production of key agricultural commodities.

Yet the continent still imports enormous quantities of processed food, machinery, and agrochemicals that it could, in principle, produce domestically. Transforming primary agricultural output into export-oriented agribusiness value chains would dramatically increase value creation within Africa itself.

Both Italy and Russia have genuine comparative advantages here: Italian firms are world leaders in food processing technologies and agricultural mechanization; Russian exporters dominate global fertilizer markets.

Digital ecosystems – from fintech platforms to artificial-intelligence-enabled logistics and supply-chain management – are also emerging as powerful drivers of productivity and financial inclusion. Here, Italy’s strengths in digital innovation and industrial automation are particularly relevant.

Infrastructure development and renewable energy round out a list of sectors where foreign investment could, if properly structured, generate lasting economic returns for African host economies.

The Risk of Repackaged Dependency

And yet rhetoric about partnership and co-development has a long and inglorious history on the continent. The uncomfortable reality is that much of Italy’s existing trade with Africa reproduces a pattern that “Destinazione Africa” itself implicitly acknowledges: raw materials flow northward from Africa; refined and manufactured goods flow southward in return.

Oil and gas are imported, processed in Italian refineries, and sometimes re-exported to African markets. Metals sourced from African producers return to the continent as industrial machinery and processing equipment. The value added accrues overwhelmingly outside Africa.

Russia’s track record in Africa is more recent and more opaque, but the structural risk is the same. A new intergovernmental commission and a dedicated investment fund are institutional mechanisms – useful ones, perhaps – but they are not, in themselves, a guarantee of genuine technology transfer or meaningful local industrial development.

The Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs projects that African imports of machinery and agro-industrial technologies could grow by between seven and twelve percent annually in the coming years. Ethiopia, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are cited as among the fastest-growing markets for these products.

Those projections are probably correct. But faster growth in African imports of Italian or Russian machinery is not the same thing as faster growth in African industrial capacity. The difference matters enormously.

Africa’s Strategic Window

This is precisely why African governments and regional institutions should not approach this moment passively. The simultaneous interest of multiple global powers – Italy, Russia, China, the Gulf states, the United States, and others – in deepening economic ties with Africa is, in aggregate, a source of leverage.

Competition among suitors creates bargaining power for the courted.

That leverage should be used deliberately. The terms on which foreign investment is welcomed – the requirements for local content, technology transfer, skills development, and reinvestment of profits – will determine whether the current wave of international interest accelerates Africa’s industrial transformation or merely generates a new cycle of resource extraction dressed in more sophisticated language.

Coherent national industrial strategies, coordinated through the AfCFTA framework, could make the difference.

The stakes are unusually high. If external investment is aligned with continental integration efforts and anchored in genuine partnerships that build local capacity, the current moment could mark a structural shift in Africa’s role in the global economy: from a supplier of raw materials to an increasingly important hub of production, innovation, and regional value chains.

That outcome is achievable. But it will not happen automatically.

Italy and Russia are placing their bets on Africa. The more important question is what bet Africa is placing on itself.

Danilo Desiderio serves as the CEO of Desiderio Consultants Ltd in Nairobi, Kenya, specializing in African customs, trade, and transport policies. He is a customs and trade expert at the World Bank and a senior associate to the Horn Economic and Social Policy Institute (HESPI).