Russia’s push to sell more liquefied natural gas to Africa took center stage at the third Russia-Africa summit in Moscow, and for African citizens the stakes are concrete: access to electricity, reliable fuel supplies, and the cost of getting energy to people who currently have neither.
The summit, hosted by President Vladimir Putin last week, brought together leaders and delegates from 48 African countries, including 22 heads of state. Energy partnership ranked among the main topics on the agenda, and the discussions centered on a problem that affects millions of households across the continent: how to get gas to the people and places that need it most.
Russian energy giant Novatek confirmed a new focus on the African market during the event. Deputy CEO Sergei Solovyov said the company is examining various gas projects around Africa and is interested in establishing long-term partnerships. Novatek also pledged to offer its own liquefied natural gas technology for joint projects with African partners.
Solovyov projected that the African gas market could reach 20 to 30 million tons in the near future, taking into account pent-up demand, or about 7% of the global LNG market. “Hardly any of this demand is covered by contracts or terminals,” he said.
For the public, the most telling part of Solovyov’s remarks concerned who is currently left out. The weakest link, he argued, is countries without access to the sea. Almost a third of African countries have no ports, which he described as a huge risk in the supply of critical commodities, especially where borders with neighboring coastal states are inefficient.
The human consequences of that gap are stark. African landlocked countries, including South Sudan, Chad and Malawi, have the lowest levels of electricity access globally. Solovyov noted that the cause is not a lack of demand but inefficient routes. “When energy resource goes through someone’s else port and someone’s else infrastructure, each link costs extra time and money,” he said. The price of unreliable access, in other words, is paid by citizens through higher costs and delayed connections to the grid.
Novatek is not the only Russian energy company looking toward the continent. Gazprom Deputy CEO Vitaly Markelov said his company is also considering joint projects in Africa, specifically exploring opportunities for LNG supply, transportation of hydrocarbons, gas storage, and oil and gas processing.
Meanwhile, the broader context behind the pivot is geopolitical. With the upcoming EU ban on Russian gas imports within its bloc, the Kremlin has announced a shift toward Asia, and the summit talks suggest that shift now extends to Africa as well. Growing western sanctions over the past four years have pushed Russia to double down on expanding its LNG customer base.
Yet the numbers tell a more complicated story, one with direct relevance to European consumers as well as African ones. Even as the EU moves to ban Russian gas, import figures for the last year point the other way. The bloc remains the largest buyer of Russian LNG and is on course to set a new volume record for Yamal LNG imports. In the nine months between January and September, EU ports received 12.18 million tons of Russian LNG, up 9.5% compared with the same period last year, at an estimated cost of $8.79 billion.
Growth is also visible in Novatek’s Arctic LNG 2 project, where China has become the most important export destination. Chinese imports are currently reaching nearly 4 million tons, almost tripling the volumes received in 2025.
For African governments and their citizens, the question raised in Moscow is whether new Russian supply partnerships will translate into better access to energy, particularly for landlocked populations whose electricity poverty stems from logistics rather than demand. The commitments made at the summit, from long-term partnerships to shared liquefaction technology, now rest with the companies and governments involved to deliver on the ground.