New friends: Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi is welcomed by Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa in Harare. (Iranian Presidency/Getty Images)
The recent visit by the Iranian president to Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe signifies a new era of cooperation between these African nations and the Islamic Republic of Iran. There is much common ground between these countries and it is impossible to ignore certain factors that will strengthen this coming together.
Since the Islamic Revolution of 1978, when the people of Iran toppled the Western-backed regime of the Shah of Persia, no American president since Jimmy Carter has taken it upon himself to re-establish or normalise relations between the United States and the regime in Tehran, until Barack Obama made that phone call on 27 September 2013.
This single call to president Hassan Rouhani of Iran — a moderate — began the process of talks to lift the sanctions on Iran and to stop it from achieving its nuclear ambitions. On 14 July 2015, the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, namely China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the US (P5) plus Germany — with the European Union — were able to reach a deal with Iran.
This historic achievement was an agreement of great diplomatic engagement at a higher level of the P5+1 countries. It was a record to be proud of with a win-win situation for Iran and the West. The US was to ease sanctions on Iran, while the latter would halt its nuclear programme.
In 2018, the new president in Washington DC — Donald Trump — unreasonably withdrew the US’s commitment to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal. The other parties to the deal struggled to work out something that could hold the JCPOA together in the absence of the US, but to no avail. Hence, the harsh economic sanctions on Iran were restored by the stroke of Trump’s pen. To the Iranians, this was a worse kind of betrayal by the US.
Despite this setback concerning the Iranian deal, Rouhani spent the better part of his presidency trying to diplomatically normalise or rather manage the Iran-US relations, with the hope that America would come back to the table and revisit the JCPOA. Rouhani served two terms.
Ebrahim Raisi, a conservative, took office on 3 August 2021. Raisi is determined to create new alliances with the non-Western world, and the continent of Africa happens to be one of those places he is focused on. The goal is to increase Iran’s international presence, diversify its economy and defeat the US sanctions.
The new regime in Tehran is looking to Africa. The Rouhani administration was preoccupied with trying to work with the West to get rid of the sanctions once and for all. Not much was achieved in the process.
Raisi visited Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni at the State House in Entebbe. (Badru Katumba/Getty Images)
It is only logical and understandable that Raisi would take a different trajectory and adopt his “look to the East” policy to gain some tangible results at home, with or without sanction from the US.
Before this much-anticipated trip to Africa, it was no coincidence that Raisi first took a trip to Latin America and the Caribbean, visiting countries that have similar experiences as Iran in terms of dealing with the Western world. He went to Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba; these are countries that share a rather complex relationship with the US, both historically and currently.
According to Opec, and a few media reports, Venezuela produced and exported about 448 000 barrels of oil a day in 2021. It is therefore speculated that because of the weakening US sanctions on Venezuela and on Iranian oil exports, the two nations might use this opportunity to disguise Venezuelan oil as Iranian oil and then sell it on the international market.
In fact, the 448 000 to 500 000 barrels a day went up to a record high of almost 700 000 barrels in June 2023, attributed to more upgraded crude. Against this background, it makes perfect sense that Raisi would go to Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba prior to further taking his trip to Africa. A strategic move that would then come full circle upon the completion of his visits to the three African nations.
At the core of Raisi’s visit to Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe were issues of trade, investment and technology. In Nairobi, the two republics signed about five memorandums of understanding, while in Kampala the two governments signed four MOUs, and finally between Tehran and Harare 12 more were signed, a total of 21 MOUs just in a single tour of Africa.
The significance of kicking off this trip in Kenya cannot be underplayed, because Kenya is the second-largest trader with Iran on the continent, after South Africa, both before and after the Islamic revolution of 1978. The MOU with the Ruto administration covers communications technology, agriculture, mining, tourism and education.
As for Uganda, even though oil reserves were discovered almost 20 years ago, it was only in January 2023 when President Yoweri Museveni officially launched the drilling of development and production wells.
French firm TotalEnergies, the China National Offshore oil and the UK firm, Tullow, have all procured licences for oil explorations. But it is unknown how the Iranians will change this balance of arrangements, if they have an interest in this stake of 6.5 billion barrels of oil reserves in western Uganda.
The foreign policy of Tehran as pursued in the past accounted for just 2% to 3% of Iran’s trade to Africa. This made Iran realise that it has not fully used Africa’s potential as a strategic partner.
Hence, this shift is expected to increase the level of trade, investment, and cooperation between the continent and Iran from $1.2 billion to about $2 billion to $3 billion within the coming year.
Such an unprecedented record is likely to skyrocket exports from Iran to the African continent, and vice versa, at the same time encouraging value addition of raw materials to be done in the factories and facilities built by Iranians for Africans.
There is no doubt that the uranium deposits in Zimbabwe and Uganda will be a factor in the uranium enrichment for Iran’s nuclear energy programme.
In other words, what the Iranians want in Africa is a win-win situation that helps them to ease the burden of sanctions from the West — and achieve maximum use of opportunities in trade, investment, technology, mining, oil explorations and many other sectors of Africa’s resources.
Aaron Ng’ambi is a geopolitical analyst and newspaper columnist, leadership instructor and social entrepreneur.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian