The Soviet Presence in Africa: an Analysis of Goals

Abstract

In the middle 1970s, scholars and politicians agree, the Soviet Union began a major effort to penetrate Africa. After a decade of relative indifference to African developments, Soviet arms and advisers, in support of Cuban troops, poured into Angola and Ethiopia. Involvement in these two countries was supplemented by further transfers of arms to a number of other African régimes, and this seemed to signal a dramatically heightened interest in the continent.