In the Central African Republic, Russian has been included in the school curriculum. The decision was made at a meeting of the intergovernmental commission of Russia and the CAR, and the country’s Minister of Education, Aurélien-Simplice Kongbélé-Zingas, signed the corresponding decree.
The CAR has been in a state of civil war since 2013. In 2018, Russia sent military “instructors” there, who, according to the American newspaper Washington Post, were in fact fighters from the Wagner PMC; it was in the CAR that this group established its largest African base.
The Wagner PMC guarded CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadéra, helped repel the rebels’ advance on Bangui in 2020–2021, and fought alongside the country’s army against armed groups. Wagner-linked political consultants and companies also carried out propaganda in the CAR, including through cartoons and the Russian House in Bangui, the Russian cultural center in the country’s capital. In return, the group gained access to the CAR’s natural resources, including gold and diamond deposits and logging operations.
Teachers from the Russian House in Bangui have been teaching Russian in CAR schools since 2024. In the completed school year, about 1,100 schoolchildren in the capital studied it, and another about 2,000 children and adults attend free courses at the Russian House every year.
In the 2024–2025 school year, Russian appeared in the curricula of two private schools at the initiative of the leadership. Later, six more schools in Bangui approached the Russian House with a request to organize classes.
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