Russia’s nuclear-for-influence strategy in Africa is coming under fire: Russia’s provision of nuclear technology to countries throughout Africa, part of efforts to shore up its influence in the continent, has attracted criticism for being unsuitable and unlikely to benefit the continent’s poorest people, Jason Burke writes in the Guardian. The light-water technology used by companies like Rosatom, which is building Egypt’s USD 30 bn Dabaa nuclear power plant, typically generates more power than most African countries have the infrastructure to distribute. Critics argue that large projects designed to distribute electricity over national grids ― which are absent in many African countries ― will perpetuate the exclusion of those who already lack access to energy.

The Ruskies using energy for influence is not unlike China’s use of the Belt and Road Initiative in Africa and Asia for the same goal. Of Africa’s 54 countries, 39 have signed on to Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, including Egypt, which is partnering with China on massive infrastructure projects in construction, energy, transport, trade and industry. Meanwhile, thousands of Chinese entrepreneurs have poured into the continent, running some 10k companies and working in fields that include retail, factories and farming. As economic ties grow, so do military and diplomatic ones. The BRI has also been raising eyebrows for luring developing countries into debt traps, with some countries even going as far as describing the Chinese initiative as the “new version of colonialism.”

Some criticism is fair, but there’s a reason Moscow and Beijing are welcome in Africa. Russia and China clearly both want to make strategic and economic gains through their relationships in Africa. But while questioning their motives or the impact on Africa is justified, sometimes the criticism leveled smacks of hypocrisy. Washington’s recent panic about the growth of Chinese and Russian influence in Africa, for instance, stems from a threat to its own interests, and also shows wilful blindness to the appetite for rapid development initiatives on the continent that have allowed ties with Russia and China to strengthen so rapidly.