Russia’s return to Africa is often discussed in terms of military cooperation, arms sales, mining, nuclear energy, and geopolitical competition with Western powers. Yet one of the less visible dimensions of Moscow’s African strategy is taking place in the information sphere. The opening of Sputnik Africa’s editorial center in Addis Ababa in February 2025 marked an important step in this direction. More than simply another foreign-media bureau, the center illustrates how Russia is attempting to localize its strategic communication and embed it within African information environments.
Ethiopia is particularly important to this strategy. Russia and Ethiopia have one of the oldest diplomatic relationships between Russia and an African country, formally dating to the late nineteenth century. Their relationship intensified dramatically during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union became the principal international supporter of Ethiopia’s Derg regime. Military cooperation was accompanied by education, technical assistance and cultural exchanges, creating networks and memories that survived the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Moscow increasingly draws upon this history. Contemporary Russian diplomacy portrays Russia not as a newcomer competing for African influence, but as a longstanding partner that supported African states without possessing a colonial empire on the continent. This distinction is politically useful. It allows Moscow to connect contemporary themes of sovereignty, multipolarity and opposition to Western dominance with older narratives of anti-colonial solidarity.
Why Addis Ababa?
Ethiopia’s importance, however, goes far beyond historical ties. Addis Ababa is Africa’s principal diplomatic capital; perhaps the Brussels of Africa. It hosts the African Union, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and a large diplomatic community. Establishing a stronger Russian media presence in Ethiopia therefore potentially provides access not only to Ethiopian audiences but also to politicians, diplomats, journalists and policy communities from across the continent.
The establishment of Sputnik’s first major editorial center in Sub-Saharan Africa in Addis Ababa should be viewed from this perspective. Crucially, Sputnik began producing material in Amharic rather than relying exclusively on English, French or Russian. It subsequently expanded into radio broadcasting in Ethiopia, while Russian media organizations developed cooperation, exchanges and training activities with African journalists.
The significance is not simply that Russia is producing more media content. It is that the communication model is changing. Instead of transmitting messages produced in Moscow to African audiences, Russia is investing in localizing its narratives. Local language matters. So do Ethiopian journalists, locally relevant topics and partnerships with domestic media institutions. A message about multipolarity or sovereignty, communicated in Amharic and connected to Ethiopian political experiences, is potentially very different from the same message reproduced by a Russian international news service. This makes Ethiopia a particularly interesting laboratory for Russia’s evolving African communication strategy.
From Soft Power to Narrative Power
Russia faces an obvious structural problem in Africa. Economically, it cannot compete with China, the European Union, or the United States across the entire continent. Its trade and investment footprint remains comparatively limited. Moscow therefore has incentives to concentrate resources where relatively modest investments can generate disproportionate diplomatic and political visibility.
Information, together with education, is one such field. Russian state-backed media frequently organize international affairs around several interconnected themes: the emergence of a multipolar international order, the importance of state sovereignty, criticism of Western interventionism, the legacy of colonialism and the need for stronger political agency for countries of the Global South.
These narratives have particular resonance in parts of Africa because they connect with debates already present in African societies. Russia does not need to manufacture dissatisfaction with international inequality, Western double standards or the colonial legacy. These issues have long histories independent of contemporary Russian foreign policy.
The more sophisticated element of Russian communication is therefore not necessarily the invention of new grievances but the incorporation of existing ones into a geopolitical narrative in which Russia presents itself as a supporter of sovereignty and a more plural international order. One thing Russia knows how to do is align its diplomacy with its aims. Russian diplomats are known for being trained in the languages of the countries in which they serve. Therefore, the Russian Ambassador is praised by Ethiopians for being one of the few, if not the only, to speak Amharic fluently, while many EU diplomats have no clue about Ethiopia, let alone any familiarity with the country or the continent.
Ethiopia offers especially fertile ground for the “sovereignty” message. Sovereignty and resistance to external pressure occupy important positions in Ethiopian political history and national narratives. Ethiopia was never formally colonized, apart from the period of Italian occupation, and the Battle of Adwa remains one of the most powerful symbols of African resistance to European imperial expansion. At the same time, recent Ethiopian governments have repeatedly emphasized sovereign decision-making and resisted what they perceive as external interference in domestic affairs. Russian narratives centered on non-interference and opposition to Western political conditionality can therefore be connected to locally meaningful historical and political themes.
Media and a Broader Strategic Partnership
Russia’s expanding media presence should, consequently, not be examined in isolation from its broader relationship with Ethiopia. The bilateral relationship has expanded to include nuclear technology, trade, education, security, and multilateral diplomacy. Ethiopia’s membership in BRICS since 2024 has created an additional platform for cooperation. During 2026, high-level diplomatic contacts continued to intensify, including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Addis Ababa in July and discussions between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and President Vladimir Putin on the margins of the September BRICS summit.
Media cooperation complements these developments. Nuclear technology presents Russia as a development and technological partner. Educational exchanges build long-term professional networks. Diplomatic cooperation reinforces the language of multipolarity. Media can then connect these otherwise separate activities into a coherent story about what Russia represents.
This is why Sputnik should not be understood simply as a broadcaster. It is part of a wider ecosystem of Russian engagement in which diplomacy, development projects, education, historical memory and communication reinforce one another.
African Audiences Are Not Passive
There is nevertheless a danger in describing every expansion of Russian media as evidence of successful Russian influence. The existence of Sputnik in Amharic does not demonstrate that Ethiopian audiences accept its interpretation of international affairs. Nor should Ethiopians be treated as passive consumers of geopolitical narratives produced elsewhere. Ethiopia itself pursues a highly diversified foreign policy. It maintains important relationships with China, the European Union, the United States, Türkiye, the Gulf states and other international partners while simultaneously expanding cooperation with Russia and participating in BRICS. Engagement with Moscow therefore does not automatically amount to geopolitical alignment with Moscow.
Russian narratives succeed or fail within an already competitive Ethiopian information environment. Their attractiveness depends partly on whether they correspond with existing Ethiopian understandings of sovereignty, development, colonialism and international power. Local actors can accept some Russian narratives, reject others or reinterpret them according to their own political interests. This African agency is essential for understanding contemporary information competition.
Ethiopia as a Test Case for Russia’s African Strategy
The Ethiopian case ultimately tells us something broader about Russia’s evolving approach to Africa. Moscow appears increasingly interested in moving from simply broadcasting to Africa toward producing and distributing narratives within African information environments. The distinction is significant. Local-language content, domestic partnerships, journalist networks and strategically located editorial centers can potentially provide greater reach than conventional foreign broadcasting.
Addis Ababa is particularly valuable because the boundary between national and continental politics is unusually porous. What happens in Ethiopia’s diplomatic and information environment can reach institutions and political communities far beyond Ethiopia itself.
This makes the Sputnik center important even if its direct Ethiopian audience remains modest compared with major domestic media organizations.
Russia’s realistic objective is persistent presence: ensuring that Russian interpretations of international affairs form part of the menu of narratives available to African journalists, policymakers and publics. This is also why the longer-term significance of the Ethiopian experiment deserves attention. If the Addis Ababa model is expanded to include additional African languages, radio broadcasting, journalist cooperation, and partnerships with local media organizations, Russia could gradually construct a decentralized communication network whose influence is not dependent on a single television channel or news agency.
The central question is therefore no longer simply whether Russia is expanding its media presence in Africa. It clearly is. The more important question is how effectively Moscow can transform international broadcasting into locally embedded communication networks.
Ethiopia may provide one of the clearest answers. Its historical relationship with Russia, diplomatic centrality, political emphasis on sovereignty and position within BRICS make it an unusually favorable environment for Moscow’s message of multipolarity and Global South cooperation. Whether that message ultimately translates into durable political influence will depend not only on what Russia communicates, but on how African audiences and institutions choose to receive, reinterpret, or reject it.