L. Fituni, I. Abramova Resource Potential of Africa and Russia's ...

tion whereas the developed countries consume 52 percent and develop
21 percent of all resources.
Lurking behind the average world figures are even more glaring
dissonances and differences. It would hardly be too much to say that
one of the strongest motivations for reordering the geopolitical realities
has been the ambition to take control of resources on the global,
regional, or sectoral level.
This is the backdrop against which leading economies of the
world increasingly intensify their strategic rivalry for Africa's resources.
The continent abounds in various types of natural resources,
in nearly all known types of minerals. Africa leads the world in the
reserves of manganese, chromites, bauxites, gold, platinoids, cobalt,
vanadium, diamonds, phosphorites, and fluorite. It is second in the
reserves of copper, asbestos, uranium, antimony, beryllium, graphite,
and third in the reserves of oil, gas, mercury, and iron ore. It also
has substantial reserves of titanium, nickel, bismuth, lithium, tantalum,
niobium, tin, tungsten, precious stones and so on.
Despite being widely different and belonging to different subgroups
in terms of socioeconomic development, Russia and Africa
are similar for being among the few remaining world regions with
plentiful and not completely depleted resources (in company, perhaps,
with Brazil and smaller regions in Asia). All this, to a significant
extent, determines their present position in the world economics
and politics and makes them targets of expansion and international
pressure, which, for the above reasons, is only bound to grow.
As the economic situation of Russia began to improve in 2001–
2008 and its international positions began to grow stronger as a consequence,
certain Western countries have come to actively use the
propaganda thesis of the hypothetic threat of Moscow's "raw materials
(alternatively, energy) diktat" and its ambition to "place under its
control the vital energy resources and routes of their delivery."
At the same time, Russia's expanding economic cooperation
with the developing countries is interpreted as a threat. The actual
underlying reason for these claims is the intensifying global rivalry
for access to the shrinking reserves of natural resources a considerable
proportion of which are in Russia and Africa. As a conse-
14