Using media as a weapon

Russia continues to expand its influence in Africa. Especially the African media and technology landscape is now coming into focus.

Text Simone Schlindwein, Reporter Great Lakes Region

Few documents demonstrate Russia’s strategy to influence the African media landscape as clearly as the 2018 partnership agreement between Russia and Uganda, signed by Russian Minister of Telecommunications Alexey Volin and Ugandan Foreign Minister Henry Oryem, which was obtained by DW.

Prominently placed at the top of the agreement, which explicitly aims to expand “friendly relations”, is future cooperation in the field of media and telecommunications ahead of future planned cooperation in the field of nuclear energy, which Russia also wants to expand in Uganda.

Specifically, it envisages, for example, that Ugandan journalists will be regularly invited to seminars and training sessions at the headquarters of the Russian state broadcaster Russia Today (RT) in Moscow. In return, Uganda’s television frequencies are to be released to broadcast RT’s English-language programming in Uganda, “including RT signals for hotels and pay TV,” it says. In addition, the Russian state-run news agency Rossiya Segodnya, which includes state-run radio Sputnik, is to work closely with Uganda’s state media. Specifically, they are to “share content in English,” according to the document, “to intensify mutual understanding between the people of the two countries.”

Uganda is one of Russia’s closest partners on the African continent. Almost the entire Ugandan military arsenal is Russian-made, including its air force. Uganda has so far abstained on all resolutions against Russia in the UN General Assembly. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov gratefully shook hands with Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni during his tour of Africa last year. At a preparatory meeting for the next Russia-Africa summit last September, Russian President Vladimir Putin called Uganda a “reliable partner in Africa”.

Expanding Russia’s media influence also includes setting up necessary hardware. The above-mentioned document refers to cooperation in terms of satellite and transmission technology for telecommunications companies. After all, when the European Union (EU) shut down Russian state media Sputnik and RT within Europe in March 2022, RT channels also went offline in Africa. The reason: RT was using European companies such as Luxembourg-based Intelsat, which broadcast RT programming to Africa via their satellites. However, it took less than two months for RT to go back online on the continent; this time with help from China. The Chinese pay-TV company StarTimes, which dominates the market in Africa, cleared frequencies for the Russian broadcaster.

‘Russia’s media charm offensive’

Since then, the Moscow-based propaganda broadcaster RT has been steadily expanding its presence in Africa. Initially, RT probably had its sights set on opening an African news bureau in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, where many Western correspondents are present. In July 2022, an RT spokesperson ultimately announced: “We are indeed currently focused on developing our English-language Africa hub in South Africa.”

RT’s chief Africa correspondent since then is Paula Slier, a white, experienced journalist from South Africa. In 2005, she was posted to the Middle East as a correspondent for RT, and since last year she has been working for the Russian state broadcaster in Johannesburg to expand its network of correspondents on the continent. Steadily, RT is running ads on the continent to hire more local staff.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (L) and Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni.

“The media charm offensive in Africa is linked to Russia’s broader efforts to rebuild its presence on the continent,” said Guido Lanfranchi, co-author of a recent study on Russia’s influence on the African continent that he prepared for the Dutch Institute for International Relations. The use of media and propaganda is a key tool in this so-called “softpower” strategy by Moscow, he concludes.

‘Russian radio in Central Africa’

The extent to which Russia goes to dominate the African media world is already evident in the Central African Republic. The country, wracked by numerous civil wars, is one of Moscow’s closest partners on the continent. Since 2017, Russia has not only dispatched military trainers and mining companies there, but also stationed more than 1,000 mercenaries from the private security firm Wagner, which according to UN investigations is responsible for serious human rights crimes.

But this is hardly reported to the public anymore because Central Africa’s journalists are either under Moscow’s influence or are muzzled. A prominent example of this is Radio Lengo Songo, one of the most popular radio stations in the capital Bangui and within a radius of nearly 100 kilometers. Founded in 2018 with the official reason of promoting peace and reconciliation in the local language of Sango and French, the program’s content has increasingly changed since 2021. A scientific evaluation of the program’s content by French media scholars found that nearly 60 percent of online articles on the website now contain pro-Russian statements. The station is now popularly referred to as “the Russian radio”.

What can happen to journalists when they speak out against Russia’s influence is also illustrated by the example of Central Africa. In February 2022, the journalist Sinclair Maka Gbossokotto was found dead in Bangui. The cause of death remains unexplained to this day. But colleagues suspect he was targeted by Russians. One of the leading investigative reporters specializing in fact-checking and data journalism, he became chairman of the Journalists’ Network Against Disinformation (CJCLD), which sought to track down the sources of Russian-sponsored fake news in Central and West Africa. Colleagues speculate this may have been his undoing. Two days before his unexpected death, he had reported about receiving “serious threats”. The night before his death, he had a meeting with an anonymous source over dinner. The next morning, he complained of abdominal pain and died shortly thereafter in the hospital.

Other journalists in Bangui consider it likely that Gbossokotto may have been poisoned because of his work critical of Russia. They too are afraid, not least after it became evident that no journalist is safe when researching Russian involvement in Africa. In 2018, three well-known Russian investigative reporters from Moscow died in an ambush near the Central African city of Sibut. They wanted to make a film about the Wagner mercenaries, who had just been stationed there. It cost them their lives.