Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/24/russia-building-nuclear-scienc.html
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Of course. Given Russia’s abysmal, nuclear safety record, what Russian would care about Rwanda.
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My first thought was that Rwanda used to be famous for tours to see gorillas
Then my mind goes towards radioactive gorillas
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My mind goes to the genocide but that is just me.
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America is shunning Africa as a “shit hole” (Trumps words, not mine.) While China and Russia are investing heavily in it. Africa is poised to explode economically in the next few decades. There are already pockets of prosperity and overall their poverty levels have dropped. China sees it as a huge, untapped market and willing to gamble that stability through investment will equal huge gains in the long run.
Just another example where we are going to end up slipping behind, but oh well.
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While trump is busy grifting ‘muricans, Russia and China move into Africa.
As China has in Afghanistan.
Seems to me the one thing trump is leaving out of his tough guy dictator fetish is the taking over the world part.
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Russia building nuclear science center
in Rwanda
Yep. Seems legit.
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Strategically - because of the various terrorist groups.
I haven’t read about concerted efforts for investment in the private sector. I am sure there are some US companies who are.
They want Africa’s untapped minerals and metals.
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Partly, but China sees a huge untapped consumer market.
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Possibly the more interesting aspect of this Sochi meeting and Rwanda has been Rosgeo’s interest in Lake Kivu, which holds so much methane in its waters that it could explode:
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Hence “I said used to be famous for tours to see gorillas”
American (European and Japanese) Investment in the private sector tends to go towards resource extraction industries rather than infrastructure.
Procuring Oil, gold, tantalum (needed for electronics manufacturing), diamonds, cheap agricultural products…
Bear in mind China is investing in extraction as well, but they are also trying to build up the means of getting stuff to them and maintaining the supply.
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You mean they’re exploiting African countries. China especially has the “investment” model of buying land, paying for various rights, and then bringing Chinese workers over and using them for labor/etc. instead of locals. This is a pretty well-documented issue.
As for Russia, they’re just trying to gain political and economic leverage by providing loans/other money to governments in exchange for privileges that will bind the country to Russia for the foreseable future. They’re doing the same over here: they provided our government with a huge loan in exchange for being allowed to build a new nuclear plant (Paks II). The government got money they sorely needed for campaigning, Russia’s Rosatom gets a nice job building an entire nuclear plant, and we’ll pay Russia back the loan for generations to come… hoping the nuclear plant won’t blow up on us.
Make no mistake, African countries, as such, don’t benefit from these investments. Corrupt politicians and political/financial elites do.
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They did the same here in the US: provided a huge loan to some jack-hole real estate developer who will never be able to pay it back so the jack-hole runs for president, is helped by said loan providers, and then when they win the electoral college convert all US foreign policy to help Russia in exchange for not having to pay the loan back.
Taxes. Now.
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Yeah, welcome to a world where America ain’t so important anymore, since no one can trust us now.
Not that we’ve always kept our word in the past, of course, but at least we had a predictable pattern of behavior in the international sphere
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There are also reports that Russia is looking at opening a military base in the Central African Republic. Between them and the Chinese, Africa is rapidly being drawn closer to the ‘unfree’ parts of the world.
The question with Russia though is - how can a country with an economy smaller than Australia’s possibly afford all these activities?
Rwanda’s economy is going gangbusters right now; it’s regularly appearing as one of the most business-friendly countries in the region, and it is leaping up the development index -so wanting to get into nuclear technologies isn’t that surprising - being able to produce radioisotopes for medical and industrial use in Africa will have a lot of cachet.
The downside is that the current political situation in Rwanda under President Kagame is that of the familiar African strongman backed up with oppression - only he’s better at selling his politics to the West.
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