This is What Happens When You Ignore Africa
By 
Americans don’t know the first thing about Africa and it has never ever been a foreign policy priority for the nation, including during the Cold War. Sure we would kill Patrice Lumumba or something, but it’s not like we really paid Africa that much attention even then. And since the Cold War? Please. There’s a serious problem with this–it has allowed China and Russia to enter the void and fill that vacuum. We’ve seen this with Chinese built development projects, which dictators love since China really doesn’t care about human rights. And we see this with Putin building himself a global propaganda network in the nations that the U.S. ignores.
In South Africa, a social media influencer who added “Vladimir” to his Twitter name to convey his reverence for the Russian president transmits Russian-generated content over Twitter and Telegram to a growing audience that now numbers 148,000 followers.
On Afrique Média, a television channel based in Cameroon that reaches millions of people in Africa and recently signed a partnership with RT, the state-funded Russian television network, pundits regularly praise Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with one recently declaring, “Glory to Putin.”
An animated video circulating online shows a brave Russian commando from the Wagner group, which is fighting for Russia in Ukraine, joining West African soldiers to defeat a horde of invading zombies from France.
Over the past year, a flood of pro-Russian content has increasingly been surfacing on news outlets and social media platforms in Africa. The messages aim to drum up support for the invasion of Ukraine, and to frame Russia’s growing presence on the African continent as beneficial, while vilifying American and European — especially French — involvement in Africa.
Among the U.S. intelligence documents leaked last week is a report saying that Russia’s military intelligence agency in February planned a propaganda campaign using African media to “realign” public opinion in Africa with Russia, away from the West.
A broad mix of media has been carrying this content, including influencers on social media and news websites and television networks that have signed partnerships with Kremlin-funded operations.
But hey, I’m sure Africa will soon become a priority for American policy makers one of these days here…….