Archive Report
Archive Report
Chinese-Russian Competition in Africa
Struggle to Gain Influence on Dark Continent
Independent Africa—plagued by economic problems, harassed by tribal conflicts, and handicapped by a scarcity of educated leaders—has become a battleground in the “new cold war” between the two Communist giants, the Soviet Union and Red China. As an American observer has written, “A bitter struggle for influence has now erupted on the African continent, a struggle between the Soviet Union and China in which all available political and economic weapons are being used.”1
The Red rivalry in Africa, manifesting the split within the international Communist movement,2 is in essence a power struggle between the Russians and the Chinese. Each of the two leading Communist countries seeks to extend its influence as widely as possible among the ...