USSR foray into Africa during cold war was primarily weapon and conflict based, engaging in bloody proxy wars.
Russia is a natural resource rich country, with similar resources like Africa.
Russians are most uncooperative in transferring technology.
Russia despite its resources has no employment opportunities for hasslas like eg Saudi (inspite of the kingdom weaknesses).
Russia has zero understanding of democracy.
Russia is starved of advanced human resources skills at home and worse is it’s population is dwindling, its not in a position to spare even one agricultural scientist.
What then, does any African country stand to gain from these slavics?
There’s no country that goes into another to do good things there. Russia, just like every last one of those other "superpowers, goes into other countries to extract the most, if it will be allowed.
Many Africans, (including villagers here) have been educated using free resources provided by the west taxpayers. Any, say serious web search we do will likely to get results from servers in the west. Russia is just a glorified third world country.
There is nothing free in this world. Right now nyeusi has no freedom to make his own political decisions that benefit him but doesn’t benefit the mzungu. We must follow the western mzungu orders because they provided “free” stuff.
Russia is not appreciated because of what they have to offer, their main role is countering US hegemony. There are other factions which prefer Russia because they feel aggrieved that America supports Israel, so it’s a way to hit back at the government which they see as standing between them and their goals.