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The geopolitical phenomenon commonly known as ‘France-Africa’ (Gourévitch 1997) is the fruit of the historical and political relations that France as a colonizing power has maintained and continues to maintain to this day with its former colonies in Africa. Before the colonial period, Africa was originally made up of autonomous political entities (states). ¹ The current mapping of African states is the result of the European political will expressed at the Berlin Conference held from 15 November 1884 to 26 February 1885. ²

The purpose of this study is to identify various Russian manifestations on expanding its role in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as shed light on the major obstacles it may face.

The research paper uses the “national role theory” to analyze the factors that helped in the growing Russian role in sub-Saharan African countries. It assumes that every state seeks to play a particular role, and that role is reflected in its foreign policy, which is known as “role performance,” and this role originates from several sources. On the other hand, this role faces various obstacles, mostly from the external environment, especially the international system’s structure, global values and international obligations, known as “role prescriptions.”

Despite Russia’s ability to use all its capacities in expanding its role in the African continent, the degree of its influence varied from one field to another. While it was very influential in the military, security, political, diplomatic and technical fields, it is relatively less in the economic and counter-terrorism areas.

This study paves the way for further researches related to international competition over sub-Saharan Africa, whether economically, militarily or politically, in addition to other studies related to potential cooperation opportunities, especially in security and combating terrorism.

This research’s significance stems from using the existing theoretical structure represented in national role theory in analyzing the Russian orientation toward sub-Saharan Africa, giving more attention to the latest developments in Russian strategy, as well as clarifying the major obstacles that may hinder its activities.

One of the serious crises faced chiefly by the developing countries is the large influx of people from neighbouring poor and less developed countries as a result of civil wars, political and social turbulence, to name some. Following UNHCR's latest available publication of data on refugees (2016), this chapter attempts to highlight the world's major refugee producing countries, inherent causes of such generation and destination of the emigrants on one hand and the scenario of world's major refugee hosting countries, refugees from countries received by them and their present condition, on the other. Disaggregation of data is done in each case to provide further insightful analysis.