North Korea’s military cooperation with its allies on the continent is strong

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspects a local tire factory in Chagang Province, North Korea. [Photo: AFP]

Old alliances between North Korea and several African nations forged at the height of the Cold War will not be swept away easily.

While threats from the United States and United Nations sanctions have forced many governments on the continent to keep their distance from Pyongyang, the links are not yet confined to the past.

For watchers of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un’s regime, the country’s presence on the African continent is unmissable and the hermit nation continues to benefit from discrete but vital relations.

Statues and Stalinist-style palaces of questionable aesthetic value made by North Korean artists have sprung up in many cities including Dakar, Windhoek, Maputo, Harare, and Kinshasa.

But cooperation between the regime and African governments goes much further than construction projects.

Experts estimate that economic ties between Africa and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) are worth around $200 million (Sh20.4 billion) annually.

Minerals and fishing top the league table of exports, closely followed by North Korea’s most controversial output - arms.

Despite sanctions levied by the UN in 2006 in response to its nuclear weapons programme, North Korea’s military cooperation with its allies on the continent is strong.

“A number of countries appear to maintain close relationships with the DPRK,” said Graham Neville, an analyst at the London-based international affairs think tank Chatham House.

“More than half of the countries in Africa - around 30 - engage in some form of trade with the DPRK.”

Arms sales, which are strictly prohibited by the terms of the sanctions, have drawn the ire of the international community.

UN experts have accused 11 African countries of seeking closer military ties with Kim Jong-Un’s regime in a report published in September.

According to the document, North Korea has agreed to supply light weapons to Eritrea and Democratic Republic of Congo, surface-to-air missiles to Mozambique, modern missiles or radar systems to Tanzania, and to train security forces in Angola and Uganda.

The authors probed two North Korean firms active in Namibia - Mansudae Overseas Project and Komid - which built the new headquarters of Windhoek’s spy agency.