Western media have been pointing out that Russia is stepping up its game in Africa—not just openly, through RT spin-offs and proxy websites, but by spreading disinformation and scaring locals into silence. The goal? Get a grip on land rich in natural resources and push Western businesses out of the way. Moscow plays it sly, often letting others do the talking—more specifically, popular local bloggers whose voices carry weight on the ground.
Désirée, a young journalist from Congo, knows this first-hand. Russia’s so-called “little green men” once warned her they’d take her “for a ride”—not the friendly kind. At a journalism festival in the small French town of Couture-sur-Garonne, she shared her experience. Her talk stuck with the audience, especially the way she broke down Russia’s tactics of influence in Africa.
“There’s a nasty disease called monkeypox,” she said. “It’s infectious and sparked outbreaks across a bunch of Central African countries. But Congo—my country—took the worst hit, with the highest number of deaths. And one popular blogger from Togo, Egountchi Behanzin, holds direct—or at least partial—responsibility for that awful toll. At the peak of the outbreak, he went on all his social media channels claiming the virus was man-made. He told people not to get vaccinated, not to go to hospitals, but to turn to witch doctors instead. According to him, Europeans had released the virus on purpose to line the pockets of their pharma companies.
And then he pushed it even further—saying monkeypox causes infertility and that white Europeans were trying to shrink the Black population of the world. Do I even need to explain how many people died because they went to healers to lift curses instead of seeking real medical help?”
Egountchi Behanzin has 15,400 followers on Instagram. He brands himself a “Pan-African leader” and makes no attempt to hide his affection for Moscow. A year ago, he posted a photo alongside Leonid Slutsky, head of the foreign affairs committee in Russia’s State Duma. In another post, he flatly declared, “France is a terrorist state”—making it clear he’s not accidentally crossing lines, but doing it on purpose. “We were invited to Vladivostok, to the economic forum!” he boasted, grinning in front of the event’s official banner.
Back home, rested and upbeat, the blogger jumped into a new mission: warning Africans about the supposedly “dangerous” Western malaria vaccine. There’s no evidence behind any of his claims, but that didn’t stop them from spreading fast on social media—often with word-for-word captions. The same language popped up on official Kremlin platforms and the pages of other prominent pro-Russian voices across Africa.
So what did this “economic cooperation” really look like? In 2023, Africa Confidential published leaked documents from a former Wagner Group operative. The files showed that Behanzin—along with several other loud voices exposing the “evil West”—was on the payroll of Russian organisations.
“We’ve got a lot of superstitious people,” said the journalist from Congo. “Russia takes full advantage of that. They prey on health fears and stir up old colonial grudges. It’s a nasty mix—and they don’t deliver it directly. They use people like Behanzin to spread it. That way, the message feels local. Because, like anywhere else, people tend to believe their own.”
Looking deeper, the Africa Defense Forum (ADF) magazine quotes Mark Duerksen, a researcher at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies. He views these health-related disinformation campaigns as part of a broader, well-established Russian strategy in Africa. “This kind of messaging undermines public health systems,” he says. “It discourages people from seeking medical care or trusting doctors.”
Africa and Russia go way back. During the decolonisation era, the Soviet Union threw its weight behind communist movements across the continent—not out of solidarity, but to edge Western powers out of Africa’s resource-rich, strategically important mining zones.
More recently, when Moscow wanted to make sure Africans didn’t start questioning its real motives, it didn’t just turn up the propaganda. It sent in its Wagner Group mercenaries.
Regime changes in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger came with the quiet but visible backing of Prigozhin’s fighters. And despite his death, analysts agree: Russia hasn’t dialed back its presence on the continent.
Today, Russian propaganda reaches over 40 African countries in six different languages, Ukraine’s military intelligence warns. Pro-Kremlin media have recently expanded into Angola and Mozambique, with plans to start broadcasting in Ethiopia by year’s end. “RT’s footprint across the continent is growing fast,” said Andriy Yusov, spokesperson for Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence. “In just two years, the number of African partner channels has doubled—from 30 to 60.” Russia is also training African journalists, but on its own very particular “standards.” The impact is clear: take Désirée, the Congolese journalist mentioned earlier, who now has to write exclusively under a pseudonym.
“Military intervention, anti-Western propaganda, resource grabs—Russia has stepped up its activity in Africa in recent years,” sums up the French-German broadcaster ARTE. These disinformation campaigns sow fear and chip away at trust in local governments. But this isn’t new. During the Cold War, the Kremlin pushed a false claim that AIDS was an artificial “ethnic weapon” unleashed by the West on Africans. Why reinvent the wheel when the old tactics still get results?
