Russia’s Road to El Dorado

As a new convoy of Russian armored vehicles arrives from the port of Lomé to support Russia’s Africa Corps deployment in Mali, that mission has entered its fifth year. Russia’s investment of blood and treasure urgently demands a return, but what could this return be? What is the Russian end goal in Mali?

When the Wagner Group, Africa Corps’ predecessor, entered Mali in December 2021, it was pursuing a resources-for-security deal like the one it had achieved in the Central African Republic. Along with my co-authors Chris Faulkner and Colin Clarke in our book, Moscow’s Mercenaries, I documented Wagner’s lessons learned, including the false hope that future operations would match the ease with which Wagner captured the state in the Central African Republic. There, the organization built a reputation as the guarantor of national security, and in return it gained full access to the state bureaucracy and economic access across the country — from gold and diamond mining all the way to beer and liquor sales. However, as I first argued in 2022, Mali proved a much harder nut to crack. Wagner’s failure to secure extractive resources in Mali was the beginning of the end for the organization, but Africa Corps — an organization directly beholden to the Russian state — has also failed to secure access to Malian gold after taking Wagner’s place.

Wagner was unable to gain a foothold in Mali’s gold mining industry itself, a feat it had accomplished in the Central African Republic’s gold and diamond mines and Syria’s oil industry. Wagner was unsuccessful in unlocking Mali’s gold mines from the regime’s clutches, and Africa Corps has yet to demonstrate the business acumen of its predecessor. The Russian failure occurs as the Malian government aims to ensure its own control over gold mining within its borders — albeit requiring the continued investment of existing Western partners. This process began with a new mining code in 2023, which increased the government royalties and ownership stakes in mines, followed by the arrest of four Barrick Gold mining employees and an arrest warrant for Barrick CEO Mark Bristow in late 2024. Barrick and the Malian government then agreed to a settlement where Barrick would pay the state approximately $430 million in exchange for the freeing of its employees, dropped charges, and the renewal of operations. Malian President Assimi Goïta then drove to centralize Malian state gold mining via Sopamim, a state venture established to control all of Mali’s ownership stakes in the country’s mines. These developments have served to push Russia and its military entrepreneurs out of the gold business in Mali, while strengthening the Malian state and maintaining the role of Western mining companies in the country.