In Burkina Faso, teenagers listen to the Russian national anthem and artists paint a portrait of Putin in a graffiti festival. In Niger, citizens salute the Russian flag, chanting “Long live Russia, death to France! Long live Putin, death to Macron!” In Mali, Russian fighters and mercenary groups occupy artisanal mines, rich in resources, as payment for fighting jihadist terrorist cells.
Russian foreign influence is slowly encroaching on the Sahel’s people, governments, and defensive mechanisms. Though originally limited to armed forces that aimed to defend countries and their citizens from violence, Russian soft power has, in recent years, evolved into something more complex.
Utilizing the rapid electronic development permeating the African continent, Russian interlopers in areas of the Sahel have capitalized on e-propaganda, spreading anti-Western and pro-Russo sentiment as a means of not only increasing their geopolitical stake in the continent, and also blockading Western democracies from exploiting the continent’s vast, critical resources. The campaigns illustrate a replacement of one extractive and powerful global agent for another, sidelining agency in areas of the Sahel.
Democratic Instability in the Sahel
The Sahel has faced a long history of instability, with countries in the region subject to colonial rule between the 1890sand 1960. Colonial investments directed to “utile” aspects of the region exploited areas rich in material and natural resources, resulting in land degradation and overuse. Areas deemed “inutile” experienced a lack of long-term economic growth and border disruption.
Even after colonial independence, areas of the Sahel were marked with instability and with the persistent and growing influence of violent extremist organizations spreading, threatening to exacerbate humanitarian crises. The French effort of Operation Barkhane across Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad in 2014 and the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) in 2013 are both prime examples of failed counterterrorism strategies by Western powers. However, both missions have since ended, with the last remnants of colonial powers attempting to stabilize the region ceasing in December of 2023.
Yet, the effort was unsuccessful at its goal of perpetuating democratic ideals in the region and was not received well by the Sahelians. As analyst Edwige Sorgho-Depagne says, “the French were tolerated, rather than welcomed.” The significant time, resources, and resulting success colonial powers had preached would be invested in the region were rendered moot.
Even countries that made significant progress were vulnerable. Take Burkina Faso, a country that emerged from a nearly three-decade-long authoritarian government, then implemented political reforms, gained a measure of democracy, and was even called “one of Africa’s success stories regarding freedom of the press” by Reporters without Borders.
Nine months later, the country experienced two coups, first by junta leader Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, and next by Captain Ibrahim Traroré on grounds of protecting the country’s fragile security situation with jihadist terrorist cells. However, the situation worsened under Traroré, with the number of people killed by jihadist groups almost tripling since the coup. Additionally, more than 2 million Burkinabe have been displaced, and education is at a downturn with one in four schools being inoperable.
Instability in the Sahel has become perpetual, and the lack of effective measures taken by Western democracies has exacerbated already existing tensions Sahelians have with colonial powers. Western failures, coupled with the growing number of coups in the past decade, created a vacuum of power that had to be filled.
Growing Power of the Kremlin’s “African Initiative”
Enter Russia, a power that had slowly been leveraging failed French government counterterrorism strategies through social media and pro-Kremlin online campaigns, arguing that France had increasingly encouraged jihadist cells in areas of Africa, further spreading anti-French and anti-colonial sentiment. Capitalizing on the destabilized Sahel, Russian forces, through armed force and cyberspace, have taken the region by storm, securing military cooperation agreements that further expand its influence.
Its main source of control is the “African Initiative News Agency,” a Kremlin-created new intelligence agency that aims to strengthen ties between Africa and Russia by disseminating information that negatively portrays Western democracies. According to the US Department of State, the organization actively recruits African journalists, correspondents, reporters, and members of local information networks to amplify Russia’s positive portrayal and tarnish other countries. Further, the organization attracts reporters through high-paying salaries, often offering more than double that of African outlets.
The initiative has organized what BBC calls “press tours,” transporting bloggers and reporters from different countries to varying areas of Russian occupation. Numerous officials call it a method of “propagating certain narratives,” as journalists are encouraged, and more often than not forced, to write pieces with overtly positive connotations of Russian action.
In addition to the evident bribery of this “free press,” the African Initiative’s origins are questionable. To establish the organization, operatives utilized organizational structures previously used by the dismantled Wagner mercenary group, a Russian private military organization that, in previous years, enforced a strong armed presence in areas of Mali. Former employees of Wagner were even hired by the African Initiative in a transformation of Russia’s once-powerful weaponized influence into something more covert.
Dissent against the initiative has resulted in targeting by the Wagner group, further preventing any journalistic rebellion against Russian-biased media. Journalists such as Ephrem Yalike-Ngonzo, who worked under the African Initiative for three years, told that tasks included reporting stories that praised Russian forces and their activities, as well as organizing protests and demonstrations that challenged Western influence. Yalike-Ngonzo, after fleeing to Europe, described the organization as a “disrespect of human rights.”
A Campaign of Misinformation
The disinformation campaign has become widespread, and the timing is no coincidence. The “African Initiative” capitalizes on the 300 million Africans who have come onto social media in the past 7 years, and the more than 400 million active social media users and 600 million internet users on the continent. Inadequate media infrastructure, newspaper distribution, and poor internet have created information poverty throughout the continent, and, consequently, many Africans rely on social media platforms for the majority of their news—a vulnerability to misinformation.
With reference to Russia, the nation has turned to using media and cultural initiatives as a vessel for propaganda and the spread of misinformation. Russia is responsible for almost 40 percent of all disinformation campaigns on the continent. Reports have found 189 documented campaigns to spread disinformation throughout the African continent, a nearly fourfold increase since 2022.
In countries with significant instability, military juntas already limit speech and dissent, paving the way for pro-Russian sentiment and anti-imperialist rhetoric to flourish, further shifting the tide to support the Kremlin’s activities in areas of the Sahel. To further encroach on both the citizens and the leaders, Russians have pampered Sahelian government officials, similar to journalists, with free trips and tours throughout the country and occupied territories. In a year of numerous elections, leadership uncertainty coupled with a biased press provides a prime opportunity for the initiative to spread disinformation.
The initiative primarily spreads misinformation through social media accounts, websites such as afrinz.ru, and VKontakte, and channels on Telegram such as “Smile and Wave.” The initiative even maintains a news website with stories in Russian, English, French, and Arabic, covering a large demographic.
Campaigns have had incredibly negative effects, and have even resulted in attempts to redirect the blame of human rights atrocities. One infamous example occurred after the French transfer of power to the Malian armed forces. Russian Wagner Group mercenaries staged evidence that the French had deliberately killed civilians in Gossi, a rural area of Mali, evidenced by Russian-linked social media accounts blaming the colonial power. A month earlier, mercenaries had employed a similar tactic, deflecting blame onto the French despite mounting evidence that the Kremlin-linked mercenaries had massacred more than 300 civilians in a central Malian town.
Two Birds with One Stone
Pro-Russo sentiment is not the sole goal of the initiative: it is instead part of a wider project of countering the United States. The three West African states with close links to the remnants of the Wagner Group—Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso—have all experienced military takeovers in recent years, and they have since announced their withdrawal from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the creation of their own “Alliance of Sahel States”.
This vulnerability has allowed Russian forces to take advantage of the Sahel’s resources highly sought after by Western democracies. In almost every country in which it operates, Russian forces have been bolstered by disinformation campaigns, allowing for the exploitation of valuable natural resources using their counter forces as a means of covering costs and extracting revenue. According to recent sources, Russia has extracted US$2.5 billion in earnings from gold mines out of the continent since 2022.
Russian fighters are not only securing allies in areas of the Sahel, but also siphoning off areas rich in resources, preventing Western exploitation, brewing anti-Western sentiment and future alliances in those areas, and profiting from the extraction. Slowly but surely, they have been successful in gaining greater control over natural resources through rewriting codes to give military juntas, which have significant alliances with Russian mercenary groups.
These resources are not just funding the Russian government, but also their atrocities throughout the world. By supposedly protecting Sahelian governments from terrorist cells in alliance with their junta governments—a replication of French reliance on conflict stabilization—Russia can exploit the region’s significant mineral wealth. These resources then support Russian initiatives in other conflicts such as the war in Ukraine, providing cash to buy military material and weaponry in international markets. The interconnection of disinformation then bolsters and perpetuates this cycle, further strengthening Russia’s power on the global stage, both militarily and materially.
Implications and the Future of African Geopolitics
The Sahel represents a historically changing landscape of influence, and while Russia’s role in the region has been significant, some argue that it has since overstretched its forces and the Kremlin’s dwindling credibility among African governments indicates a potential decline in its soft-power dominance.
However, this does not imply that Western democracies should attempt to reclaim influence through the same flawed strategies that previously failed to create stability and trust in the region. Even those interventions, sometimes under the guise of protection and geopolitical stability, still often prioritized resource extraction over the long term, exacerbating distrust and instability.
The future is uncertain, but the future of Africa can be considered tied to its investment in democracy. As recently as 2019, 31 of Africa’s 54 countries were on a path to democracy; however, as of 2024, the figure has flipped, with just 22 countries considered democratic leaning. Reversing the trend away from democracy is key, but it will require strong, transparent institutions such as the free press, and addressing the structural issues that make the region vulnerable to exploitation and disinformation. Without a genuine commitment to prioritizing long-term stability over short-term geopolitics, the feedback loop of external interference and internal turmoil will likely continue, leaving the Sahel trapped in a battle that compromises its future.