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Since 2014, when sanctions following the annexation of Crimea forced Putin to find new markets and partners beyond the West’s regulatory reach, Russia has made a concerted effort to expand into Africa. It hasn’t had much effect. Today, only 3.7 percent of Russian goods end up in Africa. With more than 2.7 percent getting gobbled up by North Africa, a paltry fraction is destined for the bulk of the continent. It’s even worse in reverse, as African goods account for just 1.1 percent of Russian imports. The Sochi summit was supposed to change all this. However, there’s not much to suggest that it will. Of the $12.5 billion in deals that were allegedly signed, most were only memorandums of understanding that may never get off the ground.

Other than arms, of which Russia continues to be the continent’s key supplier, there is little it has to offer and less that Africa will take. For now, it’s hard to see how Putin’s plan to find new partners, make more money, and restart the Russian economy will succeed.

“The superpowers that are competing on this continent will determine the future of the world’s agenda,” Russian State Duma Deputy Anton Morozov awkwardly announced to a room full of African officials on the second day of the summit.

treating African states as easy-to-manipulate pawns is not only ethically and intellectually questionable—it’s also strategically silly

Judd Devermont of the Center for Strategic and International Studies explained, “The Russians go all in on the incumbent.”

As Omar al-Bashir was fighting to hold on to his blood-soaked dictatorship in the recent revolution, Russian actors swooped in with a misinformation plan to save him. They didn’t, and today Bashir is behind bars. Although the Russian-Sudanese relationship has resumed, it was a costly error in a country that can offer not only gold and oil, but also the Red Sea naval base that is one of Putin’s top priorities.

In 2018, associates of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the man who is believed to have masterminded Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, trotted out similar tactics to disrupt a race in Madagascar. The idea was to use a troll farm to influence voter opinion by manipulating online media. However, in a nation where internet penetration is just 9.8 percent, about a quarter of what it is on average across the continent, the troll farm did not make a dent. The Kremlin’s candidates went on to lose, and subsequent allegations of bribes to Malagasy officials further sullied the Russian image.

There are plenty of problems with this framing, not least the way it portrays Africans as passive political objects, rather than actors in their own right

Although Putin has had success with many of his assertive endeavors in Europe and the Middle East—polarizing publics, aiding politicians, annexing eastern Ukraine, and turning the tide of the Syrian civil war—his aggressive maneuvering in Africa has come with clear costs. “When Russia overplays its hand, Africans have distanced themselves,” Devermont said.

African states naturally have their own political preferences that are not always up for sale or at one leader’s mercy. When Russia courts ruling elites and tries to undermine democratic elections, it ignores basic trends on the continent. In the latest round of polling from Afrobarometer, Africa’s leading public survey firm, 75 percent of respondents expressed their commitment to free and fair elections.

Today, just 0.0005 percent of Africans believe that Russia serves as the best development model for their country, an Afrobarometer spokesperson told Foreign Policy. What’s more, the spokesperson said, the percentage of Africans who believe that Russia has the greatest foreign influence in their country was “lost among the ‘Others.’”

As role models and political partners, the United States and China are leaps and bounds beyond Russia. Polling from Afrobarometer shows the United States to be the most desired development model on the continent, attracting approval from 30 percent of Africans. China, meanwhile, comes in second with 24 percent. The rankings reverse for greatest foreign influence: 23 percent of Africans believe China to be the most prominent noncolonial power in their country, while 22 percent of Africans believe the United States holds that distinction.

there is a clear path for Putin to catch up—with Washington at least. Last year, U.S. President Donald Trump announced a large military drawdown that comes even as there is crucial anti-terrorism work left to do against Boko Haram in the west, al Shabab in the east, al Qaeda in the north, and the Islamic State in the south. In addition, Trump has shown total diplomatic indifference to the continent, having not sent a senior aide to Africa since former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visited last year (and was fired while he was there), having never paid a visit himself, and having filled the key role of the ambassador to South Africa with a fashion designer and Republican donor with no diplomatic experience.

As with U.S. missteps in the Middle East, Trump’s Africa policy, or lack thereof, has paved the way for Russia’s rise. “It’s another case where we’re withdrawing and Putin is moving in to fill the vacuum,” McFaul, the former ambassador, said

Regularly referencing its own encounters with Western imperialism, Beijing has proved quite adept at using a global south narrative to paint its engagement with Africa as one of mutual respect and noninterference.

At the 2015 and 2018 Forums on China-Africa Cooperation, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared his goal of “the building of a new model of international partnership” and changing “the global governance system.”

China has what Russia does not and what the United States, preoccupied with other problems, has been unwilling or unable to use: cash

One thing the great-power framing also fails to take into account is how African states, like all states, can maintain multiple partnerships. It is a basic diplomatic fact that offers particular benefits in Africa, McFaul said, given that the “U.S., Russia, and China play in different lanes.” Nigeria, which announced a new arms agreement in Sochi, is one such beneficiary. At the same time as Russia can equip the country to provide security in its volatile oil-rich southeast, China has helped fund and build its oil infrastructure, and the United States has bought its oil by the billions of dollars. On second look, the mistaken zero-sum framing becomes a positive-sum bonanza.