They were promised a chance to earn money, study abroad, and gain work experience. Instead, they found themselves assembling military drones in Russia and, in one case, were the target of a Ukrainian drone strike.
Several investigative reports have shed light on a Russian labor recruitment program that allegedly lured young African women to work in an industrial park in Russia with false promises. These women have been forced to contribute to Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine.
Women from Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria have fallen victim to this program, which primarily recruits through online job advertisements.
Press reports from news agencies like the Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and others have exposed the operation, known as “Alabuga Start,” but Voice of America (VOA) has revealed that African governments have largely failed to intervene or provide an official response to the practice. Some even appear to be collaborating with the Russian entity running the program.
The Special Economic Zone (SEZ) of Alabuga has intensified its recruitment efforts across the African continent, says David Albright, founder of the Institute for Science and International Security.
“In some of the initial investigations into this practice, recruiters in Africa were careless when asked where these women were going,” Albright said, adding that some of them now know what is happening. He hopes this will provoke a “response from these governments to the Alabuga program and the way these women are being recruited.”
Albright explained that representatives from Alabuga recently visited countries such as Sierra Leone, Zambia, and Madagascar, signing memorandums of understanding with local organizations despite reports of deceptive recruitment practices and questionable labor actions.
Albright said young women are being forced to work with toxic materials, which, according to Russian labor laws, are prohibited. But African governments have also shown willingness to engage their citizens in the “Alabuga Start” program.
VOA uncovered several online documents showing that ministries in some African countries had officially advertised the program. VOA reached out via email and phone to authorities in Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, and Nigeria but received no response. VOA also sought comments from the Alabuga program’s leaders and the Russian Embassy in Washington but received no reply.
Recruitment with False Promises
The city of Yelabuga, known as Alabuga in the local Tatar language, is located 1,000 kilometers east of Moscow in the Tatarstan region. It would hardly be an attractive destination for young people from Africa.
However, the nearby Alabuga Special Economic Zone has launched an extensive recruitment campaign across the African continent. The advertisements present an appealing and optimistic view of life in the “Alabuga Start” program.
In one video aimed at attracting potential recruits, an African woman is shown arriving in Alabuga, where she begins working in a restaurant, serving a young Russian man. At the end of the video, she returns to the restaurant as his pregnant wife.
Other ads show participants working in construction, cleaning, warehouse management, studying, and engaging in sports with their friends. Only one video shows women assembling drones, but it makes no indication that the drones have military purposes.
According to the independent Russian news site Protokol, the program primarily seeks to recruit young women because the organizers believe that young men from Africa “can be too aggressive and dangerous.”
Researchers and journalists discovered that some internal documents from the program, as reported by Albright and others, have referred to the women as “mulattoes” (a racial term for mixed African and European heritage), an outdated racial slur now widely considered offensive.
It’s not hard to understand the program’s appeal to young Africans, says Russia-Africa relations expert Maxim Matusevich, a professor of world history at Seton Hall University.
“Many of these countries have very high unemployment rates,” he told VOA. Russia “offers employment opportunities through tempting, but deceptive offers.”
Matusevich believes that “Alabuga Start” aims to address Russia’s labor shortage caused by increased demand from the war in Ukraine.
According to Albright, this lack of action has global consequences: “Alabuga Start” is involving young Africans in Russia’s war against Ukrainians.
“It’s a very deceptive program, in the sense that the applicants didn’t even know they would be working for a company under U.S. and European sanctions, producing drones that are used with devastating consequences against Ukrainian civilian targets, including power plants,” he told VOA.
“In this sense, they are participants in a crime, an international crime, considering that the war against Ukraine is illegal. They are engaging in the production of drones that are being used against civilian targets, not just military ones,” he added.
Alabuga Did Not Start with African Women
Alabuga did not begin by exploiting young African women. Earlier, young Russians worked in the production of drones.
In 2019, the special economic zone launched a program called “Alabuga Polytech,” recruiting high school students from Russia. Unlike workers from Africa and other countries, Russian students participate in a combined four-year study and work program, through accredited technical education and parallel employment in the industrial sector.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, this program expanded but faced challenges. When the program shifted to drone production, Alabuga had to lobby Russian authorities to change labor laws. According to a July report from the Institute for Science and International Security, this change allowed Alabuga to employ children under 18 to work with hazardous materials.
Soon after, parents began complaining about working conditions: participants were working 12-hour shifts in the factory, and their movements were under strict control, according to Albright. He said that since then, the program stopped recruiting workers under the age of 18.
When the special economic zone began the “Alabuga Start” program and started recruiting workers from abroad in 2022, the program became almost entirely focused on drone production.
According to Albright’s organization’s estimates, only one-third of students at Alabuga Polytech are involved in drone production, while in the “Alabuga Start” program, more than 90% of employees are involved in drone manufacturing.
Despite this noticeable difference, organizers seem to have often merged the two programs, including in some cases where participants in “Alabuga Start,” dressed in school uniforms, appear in promotional advertisements.
The latest expansion of Alabuga among African countries signals an intensification of its recruitment efforts.
VOA discovered that African governments, as well as other governments, have in some cases shown willingness to cooperate. The Nigerian Ministry of Education published a document on its website announcing open competitions for “Alabuga Start” in 2023.
Uganda’s Ministry of Education and Sports also issued a similar announcement. On the digital document library Scribd, VOA found two files that appear to be official letters from the governments of Mali and Burkina Faso, indicating that “Alabuga Start” had reserved spots for participants from these countries in 2023.
VOA also discovered a document from Bangladesh’s Bureau of Employment and Workforce Training announcing open applications for “Alabuga Start” in 2023.
Frequent meetings between representatives of the special economic zone and African diplomats and government officials, some of which included signing memorandums of understanding, seem to signal a deepening of ties.
Albright emphasizes that the drone factory in the special economic zone has been a key point of Russia-Iran cooperation during the war against Ukraine.
“Alabuga is a special economic zone that essentially builds and rents or sells buildings for civilian industry,” he said. “With the war in Ukraine, international representatives withdrew from Alabuga, and this caused factory leaders to seek funding. They then signed a contract with the Russian and Iranian governments to build drones.”
The “Alabuga” factory primarily assembles the Iranian Shahed-136 kamikaze drone.
In the first half of 2023, about 100 students from Alabuga Polytech traveled to Tehran for a two-month training program on producing Shahed-136 drones, the Washington Post reported in August 2023.
Participants in “Alabuga Start” are primarily used as low-skilled workers to carry out simpler tasks in drone assembly. They are given a list of 100 Russian words they need to know to participate in the program. The list mainly consists of basic vocabulary, but also includes a few higher-level words: “to connect,” “to remove,” “factory,” and “task.”
Promotional materials for the program that VOA has seen mostly avoid mentioning the military nature of the work. They show participants working in services, construction, or non-military industrial production.
One brochure emphasizes that after completing the contract with “Alabuga Start,” participants have the opportunity to continue working on a permanent basis, find work in another Alabuga factory, or enroll in the polytechnic faculty.
The brochure also includes images that appear to show articles from Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal praising the factory and its wages. In reality, the images have been edited to hide the fact that the articles are about military drone production.
This work has put African women at direct risk. On April 22, a Ukrainian drone crashed into the dormitory where participants in the “Alabuga Start” program were staying.
The next day, “Alabuga Start” published a video featuring a woman from Kenya, one of the program participants, who said she was going to work in a café. She explained that she had come to work and study at the Alabuga Polytechnic, not in “Alabuga Start.”
“The people who attacked our dormitory today are real barbarians and deserve serious punishment,” she said. “They wanted to scare us. But I want to tell you that they failed. You will not scare me, because Alabuga is a strong place, and we will survive.”
