Sagbo won the election — which allows him to represent the city of approximately 10,000, — based on his campaign pledge to improve the impoverished and rundown town in which he has lived for more than 20 years. He also hopes to address the growing drug problem and addiction that plagues the community. In a recent interview, Sagbo described his city as “dying” and has been described by the Russian media as “Russia’s Obama.”
Last year, Joaquin Crima of Guinea-Bissau, ran for head of a southern Russian district a year ago but was defeated. Sagbo came to the Soviet Union in 1982 to study economics in Moscow where he married and moved to a town just North of Moscow.
Although there are no official numbers for the number of African immigrants living in Russia, there is a roughly estimated population of around 40,000 “Afro-Russians.” The threats to Africans living in Russia are great, racial conflicts resulted in 49 attacks in 2009. –torrance stephens, ph.d.
