Russia is the main spreader of disinformation in Africa, reports the Africa Center for Strategic Studies. According to the US Defense Department think tank, Russia sponsors as many as 80 campaigns, targeting more than 22 countries. This is almost 40 percent of all disinformation campaigns in Africa.
The ACSS calls the spread of disinformation “a fundamental challenge for stable and prosperous African societies” and notes “a sharp increase in its use for political purposes.” The center documented 189 disinformation campaigns in Africa, a fourfold increase from 2022. According to the researchers, this is probably a gross underestimate, given the opaque nature of many disinformation campaigns.
Cheap but powerful
According to the ACSS, no African region has been spared from disinformation campaigns and at least 39 African countries have been targeted by a specific campaign. ‘The main actors are Russia, China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In that order,” said ACSS research director Joseph Siegle in an interview with Voice of America. ‘About 60 percent of all documented campaigns we have identified are sponsored by foreign countries. They do this because it is a cheap but powerful asymmetrical means of gaining influence.’
Russia champion
However, according to the think tank, Russia is the main spreader of fake news and disinformation in Africa; accounting for around 80 campaigns, and targeting more than 22 countries (representing almost 40 percent of all disinformation campaigns in Africa). Control of the state, access to raw materials and the sale of weapons, Siegle lists Russia’s motives for actively undermining democracy and supporting military juntas.
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Influencers
To illustrate, the Kremlin sponsors two prominent African influencers who together serve more than 28 million users and followers on social media. Their content is amplified daily by an extensive network of hundreds of accounts and pages linked to Russia and whose content focuses on locations of strategic importance to Russia, such as the Sahel. For example, the coups in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger were preceded by large-scale (and very successful) anti-French and anti-EU campaigns on social media.
“Shaping the narratives about what is happening on the ground influences how the public interprets events and has direct implications for governance norms and policies,” Siegle said. “Many of these campaigns are aimed at supporting military juntas or authoritarian governments with which these foreign actors have ties, allowing them to exert greater influence.”
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Impact
The reach (and therefore the impact) of disinformation campaigns can be great. Over the past 7 years, around 300 million Africans have found their way to social media, bringing the number of active social media users to over 400 million, while the continent has around 600 million internet users. Social media platforms are used (and trusted) for consuming news in Africa more than anywhere else in the world.
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The Russian campaigns of the past decade have paid off, says Kevin Limonier, a specialist in Russian cyberspace and lecturer at the Institut Français de Géopolitique in Paris. If Russia did not initially have a very strong image in Africa, that image has completely changed. According to Limonier, Moscow has successfully positioned itself as an ally of anti-colonial and ‘pan-Africanist’ parties and personalities in Africa. The narrative has already paid off in the Central African Republic and more recently in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, the three neighboring Sahel countries where pro-Russian juntas have been in power since a coup.
