From 250 to 700 dollars per article: How Russia influenced West African media content
A leak of confidential documents from a network of Russian agents operating on the African continent reveals how Russia managed to place hundreds of articles in 35 different West African French-language media outlets – sometimes without their knowledge. The FRANCE 24 Observers team worked with an international media consortium coordinated by Forbidden Stories to analyse these leaked documents, which show just how susceptible these media outlets are to foreign interference.

The list of articles included in these confidential documents is nearly 80 pages long. The spreadsheets, written in Russian, catalogue dozens of media outlets based across Africa.

A line-by-line analysis of these spreadsheets reveals nearly 650 articles published uniquely in West African media outlets between June and October 2024. In total, our team identified content that had been placed in 35 different media outlets from the region. The price allegedly paid for each placement ranged from around 250 to 700 dollars per article. 

The tone of the articles listed is unambiguous. They are anti-French and anti-Ukrainian, pro-Russian and pro-AES (AES stands for the Alliance of Sahel States, an alliance between Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso founded in 2023). The articles appeared in media outlets of varying profiles, ranging from news sites that have demonstrated close links with Russia in the past to well-respected news outlets, as well as outlets that are less respected but have wide readership. These outlets were located in numerous countries, including Senegal, Chad and Togo. 

The spreadsheet details the name of the media outlet, the order amount (in dollars) and a link to the article. The 78-page spreadsheet, titled “reports on the placement of news documents”, offers concrete proof of the influence operations that Russia is carrying out in West Africa. They reveal campaigns to spread narratives by placing articles in media outlets. In many cases, these media outlets appear to not be aware of the influence campaigns, nor are they the recipients of the money detailed in these documents. 

These spreadsheets are just one part of the 1,431 pages of internal documents leaked from the Company, a network of 90 agents operating on the African continent. The documents were shared anonymously with the pan-African media outlet The Continent. The documents were verified by French media outlet Forbidden Stories, which broke the story in February in an article laying out the inner workings of the Company. The Company was initially run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the private militia company Wagner. After he died in August 2023, the Company was slowly taken over by the Russian foreign intelligence service, SVR.

The FRANCE 24 Observers team worked in collaboration with the international media consortium put together by Forbidden Stories that includes The Continent, All Eyes On Wagner and RFI to analyse these documents and gather supporting interviews with journalists and media outlets. We were able to paint a portrait of how this network developed its influence operations in West African media outlets, taking advantage of the porosity and economic fragility of the media in this region. 

Our investigation shone a light on how dozens of these articles were placed by intermediaries operating outside of these media outlets. We have yet to determine how the money listed in these documents was actually spent. 

Out of the 35 media outlets from French-speaking West Africa listed in these leaked documents, more than 20 published at least 10 articles placed by the Company during this period of several months. Most of the articles were about news in the region, anchored in an anti-Western and anti-Ukrainian bias. 

Some of the articles were fake news stories that were part of Russian influence campaigns, including some articles about army recruitment posters supposedly placed by the Ukrainian Embassy in the streets of Abidjan. We delved deep into this fake news story in the first part of this investigation. 

The media outlet that is mentioned most frequently is AfriqueMedia.tv. The pan-Africanist outlet, based in Cameroon, is known to have close links to Russia. It also has more than 1.2 million Facebook followers. During this period, it published 125 articles in French and English placed by the Company. 

The media outlet entered a partnership with Russian television channel RT in 2022 with the aim of creating the "common information space” pushed for by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Afriquemedia.tv’s CEO Justin Tagouh was sanctioned by France and Europe in May 2025 for its "direct links with Russian authorities” and the spreading of "Russian narrative and anti-Western narrative in African countries".

Among the Afrique Média articles listed in these documents, dozens offer a positive coverage of AES news or criticise Ukraine and the actions of Western countries in West Africa. According to the documents, Russian propagandists paid 250 dollars per article.

Media outlets from AES countries are also listed, like the Malian site Bamada.net, a news site known for picking up content from Russian media outlets like RT and Sputnik. In total, the documents listed 32 articles placed by Russia on Bamada.net between June and October 2024. The articles listed, which are still online, accuse Ukraine and France of destabilising the AES by offering military support to opposition groups in power in Mali and in Niger.

"These documents prove that there is an ongoing campaign to influence news outlets,” said Maxime Audinet, a researcher and teacher at the French National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilisations (Inalco) and specialist in Russian influence. We showed him the documents before publication. 

“They illustrate a vast system of propaganda laundering to legitimise the Russian presence by penetrating local media ecosystems,” he said. “However, they also demonstrate how the Russians are taking advantage of the economic precarity of these media outlets and demonstrate the uninhibited use of corruption.” 

"Russian influence in Africa and the potential for manipulation rely as much on the spreading of fake news as the spreading of real strategic narratives,” he added. "What we see in these files is, for example, the revival of an anti-Colonial, nationalist rhetoric, by which I mean discourse that was already present and being shared in these societies.” 

According to the documents that we consulted, it appears that the Company spent $16,000 (around 13,850 euros) on placing articles with Bamada.net and $31,250 (nearly 27,000 euros) on placing articles in Afrique Média between June and October 2024. But it remains difficult to know if this sum was paid and, if so, exactly who benefited from it.

Afrique Média did not respond to our questions. Bamada.net, for its part, told us that neither the media outlet “nor any of its journalists received money for the publication of these articles”. The Malian media outlet said that they published these "contributions" after receiving them by email, like “dozens of others every week”, without verifying their origin. 

https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20260403-article-russia-influenced-west-african-media-content

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE RUSSIAN MEDIA TELLING MORE TRUTHS THAN A RENDITION OF "LA MARSEILLAISE" EN CAMEROUNIAN... UKRAINE NEWS IN FRANCE ARE SLANTED BY THE CIA AND THE PENTAGON... AS WELL WHOEVER WRITE THE STORIES OR THE NEWS ARE JOURNALISTS WHO NEED TO BE PAID... 

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