Since summer 2023, Russia has been using Iranian-made suicide drones to attack Ukraine. However, since then it has significantly modified and upgraded them, making deadlier, adding a better navigation system and speed. The drones that target residential buildings, hospitals and even cultural heritage sites became a nightly reality of Ukraine. Hundreds of them can be launched daily, so since the end of 2023, Russia has started their production on its own territory, including in the small town of Yelabuga. Facing a worker shortage, Moscow found a solution – to start recruiting foreign nationals, including young women and girls from multiple African countries. But as often happens, advertisement and reality are not the same.
Potential participants in the Alabuga Start programme are targeted by promotional material and media reports presenting the programme as a study opportunity while avoiding any mention of drone manufacturing, despite the information available in many journalistic investigations and not hidden by the Russians themselves. Definitely, none of these advertisements mention that any drone production site is a legal military target during the war. Numerous attacks against the Alabuga, the latest on June 15, killing one and injuring 13, prove the obvious.
Several high-profile investigative news outlets and think tanks have published investigations into exploitation at the Alabuga Special economic zone. While the recruiters promise Russian language courses and engineering classes, ambassadors are brought to see new classes and living facilities, the journalists, and the girls themselves tell a different story.
In October 2024, the Associated Press published an investigation which revealed that approximately 200 African women, aged 18-22, had been recruited to manufacture drones. The report detailed that approximately 90 per cent of foreign women working in the drone factories had been recruited through the “Alabuga Start” programme, which was initially advertised as a work-study programme. In May 2025, the Geneva-based NGO Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime (GI-TOC) released a 37-page report titled: “Who is making Russia’s drones? – The migrant women exploited for Russia’s war economy”. The report found that the Alabuga Start programme “fulfils several of the conditions for a case of human trafficking.” In April 2025, Bloomberg reported that Interpol in Botswana had begun investigating Alabuga Start for possible involvement with human trafficking.
While estimates of the number of women recruited to Alabuga Start varies significantly, GI-TOC suggested that a reasonable estimate based on the available information is that approximately 800 women may have participated in Alabuga Start since 2022, the majority are from African countries, including Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, South Sudan, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Zambia, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe.
Security concerns and human trafficking are only some parts of the puzzle. The GI-TOC report, as well as investigations by the women’s group, Alabuga Truth, present evidences of other multiple and regular incidents. African girls working at Alabuga SEZ have been subjected to racist and sexist abuse both in-person and online. Girls reported unsafe working conditions, including the absence of adequate protection, allergic reactions to the resin used at the factory and severe itching. All their communications are monitored, and they are under surveillance that allows full control over their lives. There are incidents of girls being dragged into prostitution. Even a Russian state-controlled media outlet, Sputnik News, described Alabuga as an opportunity for African women to find “eligible bachelors”.
So, if the international media and investigative groups, such as Alabuga Truth, have been reporting the issue since 2023, why is there still so little information about this in African states?
Throughout the recruitment process for Alabuga Start, participants are deliberately given limited and ambiguous details regarding the program. It is actively advertised by the Russian embassies in the respective countries, through online advertisement and by recruiters (many of whom are identified and their profiles are available online). The promised salaries sound appealing to the young African girls, which, together with the perspective of a good education, sounds so promising for the better future.
However, as the Associated Press highlighted on October 10, 2024, Alabuga Start participants are initially promised between $700 and $500 monthly, however, the cost of accommodation, airfare, medical care, and Russian-language classes is deducted from their monthly salary. While four African participants described working long 12-hour shifts with inconsistent days off – not a schedule that allows proper education. The website AlabugaTruth.com summarises how the Alabuga Start programme deceives and exploits young women, and provides details of the recruiters for the programme.
The ignorance of the African governments of the existing problem raises questions.
As for now, there are just a few confirmations that Ghanaian women are recruited. Yet, considering the active expansion of the Russian activities on the African continent, and that women from 30 countries have already been recruited, should we work on prevention? Such an exploitation of vulnerable groups, recruiting African girls to build war drones, while having 130 million of its own well-educated population, is just another form of neo-imperialism, that we should not remain blind.