Author: Yarno Ritzen
Published on: 20/03/2025 | 00:00:00
AI Summary:
Jean Claude Sendeoli was a teacher at a secondary school in Bangui. After his death, students posted messages on the school’s Facebook page to remember him. But what nobody knew was that even after he was laid to rest, his identity was not. In the years that followed, photos would become part of a pro-Russian propaganda campaign. Gregoire Cyrille Dongobada is a political and military analyst from CAR. He’s published at least 75 articles, mainly about the political situation in Francophone Africa. Dongobada doesn’t just look like Jean-Claude Sendeoli, the teacher and referee whose funeral was held in September 2020. The I-Unit identified more than 15 writers and at least 200 articles published since early 2021. Most of the writers, but not all, had bylines in the paid-for articles Koutele submitted to outlets for publication. Article biases and metadata from Koutele’s correspondence uncovered by the I-Unit point to likely Russian involvement, according to experts Al Jazeera spoke to. “I think a lot of states are engaged in information operations through their covert mechanisms,” Jankowicz said. France was once the colonial ruler of more than a dozen countries in Africa. After decades of economic, military and cultural prominence, its power on the continent is waning. In the past five years, there were more than 12 attempted coups in West and Central Africa, and nine of them were successful. New leaders have sought to decrease French influence, from Chad and Niger ordering French troops to leave to Senegal renaming monuments and rewriting textbooks. Metadata Two months after Togolese journalist Koutele initiated contact with Burkinabe media outlet, he reached out to it again over WhatsApp. For the first time he indicated he was a middleman, approaching and paying media in the region at the behest of someone else. Some of the WhatsApp messages he sent editors showed they were forwarded from someone else. This indicated a third party was almost certainly providing KOUTele with the articles and money. Seth Wiredu moved from Ghana to Russia in 2008 to study in Novgorod, 570km (355 miles) northwest of Moscow. By June 2019, he had obtained Russian citizenship. In 2020 he found a job working for the Internet Research Agency (IRA) based in St Petersburg. The IRA carried out a "social media campaign designed to provoke and amplify political and social discord in the United States" The company was founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, then-head of a mercenary force and a close confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin. After the 2016 election interference, US-based social media companies like Facebook and Twitter improved their systems. Prigozhin died in a suspicious plane crash in 2023 after challenging Putin over his handling of the war in Ukraine. Russia’s aims in West and Central Africa are different from what France has historically been trying to achieve. "Russia is interested in very pragmatic cooperation that leads to money flowing into Russia," Nadzharov said. France has made it quite clear that they would prefer African countries to deal with them rather than Russia. Russia will stage propaganda, and we obviously can see that this [influence campaign] is propaganda. Outlets like France24 or Radio France Internationale will propagate its own gospel. French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs said France has been working on transforming its “historic partnership” with Africa. It added: “France has been militarily involved in the fight against terrorism in the Sahel, particularly in Mali” It also said France is no longer present on the governing bodies of the Central Bank of West African States.
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