Every story about foreign influence in Africa tends to default to the same two characters: Washington and Beijing, locked in a great power contest over minerals and infrastructure. That framing was never entirely accurate, and in 2026 it is becoming actively misleading. A much longer list of countries has shown up — and one of the newest entrants is genuinely surprising.
The Usual Suspects Are Still There, Just More Crowded
Gulf states — notably the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar — have expanded investments across logistics, agriculture and renewable energy in Africa. The EU is repositioning itself through its Global Gateway strategy, green transition financing and critical minerals partnerships, though rarely matching the scale of Gulf or Chinese capital, while India and Turkey continue deepening engagement through defence and technology transfer. Africa summits are expected in 2026 with France, Italy, Turkey and Russia.
These engagements provide African governments with financing alternatives and negotiating leverage, even amid rising debt concerns. China remains a vital partner for large-scale financing, infrastructure development, industrial partnerships and resource-for-investment models, reinforced by its zero-tariff policy for African products.
That zero-tariff policy is the one we examined in detail this week. What's clear from the broader picture is that it was never really a two-player game to begin with — it was always a crowded room that simply got more media attention when framed as US versus China.
Turkey's Drone Diplomacy Gets a New Stage
Turkey has presented itself as a third way between China and the US, pursuing a flexible, multifaceted long-term strategy that combines soft power with military cooperation — including what analysts now describe as "drone diplomacy."
This is not abstract positioning. We have already documented Turkish Bayraktar drones entering DRC's arsenal in the eastern conflict, and Turkey's base at Abéché filling the vacuum France left in Chad. As the world shifts toward a more fragmented and multipolar order, Africa is undergoing internal reconfiguration amid intensified external competition, the emergence of new strategic regions, and the rise — and fall — of established powers, shaped by three factors: resources, connectivity and security.
And Then There Is Kyrgyzstan. Yes, Kyrgyzstan.
If Turkey's African push is at least explicable through existing defence and trade logic, the sudden appearance of Central Asian diplomacy in Africa is genuinely unexpected — and the explanation behind it is not flattering.
It has been an unusually busy 2026 for Central Asia-Africa relations, with Kyrgyzstan by far the most active player. In March, Ghana's foreign minister travelled to Bishkek as the first-ever African foreign minister to make an official visit to the country. In late April, Togo's president became the first African head of state officially welcomed in Kyrgyzstan. In early May, Seychelles' foreign minister followed, while Kyrgyzstan's own foreign minister made the first-ever official visits by a Kyrgyz foreign minister to Mozambique and Namibia.
That is a striking diplomatic sprint for a country that, until very recently, had essentially no presence in African foreign policy at all. The explanation has little to do with African development priorities and considerably more to do with sanctions evasion.
A Kyrgyz analyst pointed to the geopolitical factors undergirding Kyrgyzstan's suddenly active Africa policy: sanctions, Russia, and China. One driver is the emergence of a crypto corridor stretching through Kyrgyzstan, linking sanctioned Russian financial flows with trade in Central Asia and supply chains from China — built in part around a ruble-pegged stablecoin issued by a Kyrgyz company with ties to a sanctioned Russian entity. A subsequent report tracked the expansion of this network into Africa, finding that a delegation likely linked to the network appears to have made undisclosed visits to Togo and Madagascar in January 2026, with the company advertising for a country manager position in Togo by late March.
In plain terms: a sanctioned Russian financial network appears to be using a small Central Asian republic as a relay point into African markets, and that relay point's foreign ministry has suddenly become extraordinarily diplomatically active across the continent. Whether Togo, Madagascar, Mozambique and Namibia fully understand what they may be plugging into is a separate, unanswered question.
China Is Still Playing the Long, Patient Game
Amid all this new competition, Beijing's strategy has not fundamentally shifted — it has simply continued at scale.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's annual inaugural visit to Africa in January — a diplomatic tradition observed since 1991 — marked his 63rd visit to the continent since 2013. His agenda included accelerating implementation of the 2024-2027 FOCAC Action Plan ahead of the 2027 summit in the Republic of Congo, alongside securing African diplomatic support for China's broader geostrategic initiatives globally.
Maritime security has emerged as a specific area of growing interest, with African countries looking to China for patrol vessels, surveillance systems and technical training to help secure vulnerable waterways including the Gulf of Guinea. China has also provided financial and logistical backing for various AU- and UN-led peacekeeping operations, including specifically in the Central African Republic.
The Risk Underneath All This Competition
The projected average GDP growth of 4.3 percent across Africa in 2026 raises some optimism about continental economic prospects. But in the context of ongoing geopolitical instability, rising oil prices and possible shocks from the US-Israel war on Iran, the medium to long-term economic outlook looks considerably less certain — a combination of inflationary pressures, tight global credit conditions and reduced multilateral financing that could derail growth and even cause instability in a continent already grappling with severe, underreported conflicts.
What This Actually Means
The old framing — Africa as a binary battleground between Washington and Beijing — was always too simple. The real picture in 2026 includes Gulf capital, Turkish drones, EU green financing, Indian technology transfer, and now, improbably, a sanctioned Russian crypto network apparently using Kyrgyzstan as a side door into African capitals that may not fully grasp what they are agreeing to host. More players at the table usually means more leverage for African governments — but only if they can tell the difference between a genuine development partner and a relay station for someone else's sanctions evasion.
