In light of a significant exodus of educated young professionals from Russia since the war in Ukraine began in 2022, Russian companies have in the first six months of the year been increasingly looking to hire employees from Africa, Russian business daily RBC reported on Tuesday.
Citing data provided by Russia’s largest job hunting platform HH.ru, RBC said that Russian companies had “significantly” expanded their recruitment activities in Africa, with the number of vacancies targeting candidates from countries including Kenya, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Algeria, Uganda and Mauritius, growing several fold since January.
Seven of the 10 countries to see the biggest increase in recruitment activities by Russian companies so far this year were African, RBC said, while efforts to attract candidates from the US and multiple European countries decreased.
African migrant labourers occupy “diverse niches” in the Russian job market, Vsevolod Sviridov of the Centre for African Studies at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics told RBC, adding that while many take on low-skilled positions in construction or agriculture, others are appointed to “senior managerial positions in large Russian companies”.
While foreign experts in sales, marketing and IT have long been those most sought after by Russian companies, the first half of 2024 also saw demand for foreign scientists and teachers double, RBC found.
Despite the number of Africans coming to work in Russia growing every year, overall, most Russian companies seeking to hire workers from abroad continue to focus their recruitment efforts on Kazakhstan and Belarus, two countries that have similar labour laws to Russia, RBC concluded.
According to data from Russia’s Federal Security Service cited by RBC, foreign citizens entered Russia for work purposes 1.4 million times in the first quarter of 2024, the majority of whom came from Uzbekistan (689,000) and Tajikistan (358,000).
On Tuesday, independent news outlet The Bell reported that over 650,000 Russians had left the country for good since Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with Armenia, Kazakhstan and Israel the most popular destinations for Russian emigrées.
