Russia Turns to TV to Influence African Audiences

ADF STAFF

As global outrage grew over its invasion of neighboring Ukraine, Russia in 2023 began ramping up its efforts to change the narrative. Seeking to influence public opinion, the Kremlin expanded its information warfare operations worldwide.

In response, dozens of countries have banned or suspended television channels Russia Today (RT), Sputnik and other state-run media outlets. Social media platforms have restricted access to the content churned out by the Kremlin’s propaganda machine.

Despite their disinformation-laden content and their clear ties to Moscow, however, Russian media are hoping to find a foothold in Africa.

“Russia received quite a setback at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, because within a few weeks, Europe had imposed sanctions on Russia,” the South African Institute of International Affairs’ leading Russia expert Steven Gruzd told Voice of America.

“The feed of RT that comes into the South African and African markets on DStv [South African satellite broadcaster MultiChoice’s digital satellite TV service] … was cut.”

Another digital satellite platform, Chinese-owned StarSat, pulled RT in 2023 as well.

RT responded more recently by launching an advertising campaign with billboards and videos appearing in several African cities, including Ethiopia’s capital of Addis Ababa, where big-screen video promos for RT welcome visitors to Bole International Airport.

RT also targeted Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe to promote a new TV show called “Lumumba’s Africa” centered on the opinions of prominent Kenyan lawyer P.L.O. Lumumba.

Gruzd characterized the media blitz as “a little bit of a reaction to the frustration [Russia has] had” with its propaganda channels in recent years.

It’s also part of the longtime strategy of Russian President Vladimir Putin to spread influence through Kremlin-backed media.

“We are proposing a common Russian and African information space in which objective unbiased information about world events will be broadcasted to Russian and African audiences,” Putin said in a speech at the 2023 Russia-Africa summit in Saint Petersburg.

Another effort was RT’s 2022 announcement of a plan to open an English-language hub in Johannesburg led by South African-born journalist Paula Slier. But she resigned from RT in mid-2023 and has said the channel doesn’t have an office in Johannesburg.

“Since March 2022, RT headquarters in Moscow has had its eyes fixed on Africa, where it is planning a long-term presence,” Reporters sans frontières (RSF) said in a 2023 statement, noting that RT is “available in the Maghreb, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Cameroon.”

Sputnik launched a French-language platform called Sputnik Afrique in July 2022, shortly after its bureau in France was declared bankrupt and forced to liquidate by a French court.

Sputnik claims to have opened a bureau in Algeria, where it covers news from the Maghreb and Sub-Saharan Africa. According to RSF, Sputnik has “two correspondents in Algeria, where they are currently working without accreditation.”

Russia also uses proxies, such as the Cameroon-based TV channel Afrique Média, which disseminates propaganda and disinformation to a large francophone audience in West and Central Africa.

“The content of Afrique Média is the philosophy of Moscow,” researcher Isaac Antwi-Boasiako, an assistant lecturer at the School of Media at Technological University Dublin, told the Reuters Institute of Journalism. “Afrique Média follows Putin’s philosophy of promoting Russia’s agenda in Africa.”

In a 2023 report, Kenya-based data journalism nonprofit Code for Africa said that Afrique Média bears responsibility for amplifying the Kremlin’s narratives and pushing pro-Wagner Group propaganda.

Code for Africa senior investigations manager Allan Cheboi said that local media outlets like Afrique Média are intended to give legitimacy to Russian content and are more valuable than Russian outlets such as Sputnik and RT.

“You can’t convince local audiences in Africa just by speaking their language. You need to speak their tone,” he told the Reuters Institute. “People listen more and believe more when a local entity or someone who’s close to you actually speaks about a particular issue.”

Experts doubt that Russia’s promotional stunts and messages of anti-colonialism will find traction on the continent, while its oligarchs mine and smuggle natural resources out of Africa and its deadly Wagner mercenaries brutalize civilians with impunity.

“I think there are a lot of people who see through this and can see the agenda behind what is being promoted,” Gruzd said.

South African journalist Anton Harber told VOA he thought RT’s ad campaign, which used African leaders from the past, was “too dated” to sway young Africans.

“There is a huge irony in RT promoting itself as a voice of anti-colonialism at a time when Russia is increasing its influence on the continent in ways that could be described as neo-colonial,” he said. “One thing we know about RT is that it is not an African voice, but Putin’s outlet, there to serve him and his country.

“So, it is dressing up its ambitions for influence … with a paternalistic anti-colonial rhetoric.”