Facebook Struggling To Curb West Africa's Tide Of Russian Disinformation

Facebook is struggling to contain pro-Russian and anti-western posts that are contributing to political instability in west Africa, investigators and analysts have said.

- Jason Burke

The platform, which has expanded rapidly across the continent in recent years, has made significant investment in content moderation but still faces enormous challenges in curbing deliberate disinformation campaigns. One major area of concern is the strategically important Sahel region, which has suffered a series of military takeovers over the last 18 months.

Campaigns on Facebook appear to have prepared the ground for many of the coups, pushing an anti-western, pro-Russian agenda that has undermined governments. The efforts are similar to the “hybrid warfare” campaign launched by Moscow in Ukraine and elsewhere.

A report by investigators from the Digital Forensic Lab (DFRLab), a global network of researchers run by US-based thinktank the Atlantic Council, reveals how pro-Russian Facebook pages in Mali coordinated support for anti-democracy protests and the Wagner Group, a controversial Russian private military contractor that was invited into the unstable country last year after the overthrow of President Bah N’Daw by the military.

The US and others have alleged that Wagner is funded by the powerful businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is closely linked to Vladimir Putin. It has a growing presence in Africa and its mercenaries have been deployed in Mozambique, Sudan, Libya and in Central African Republic, where Wagner Group fighters committed human rights abuses while fighting alongside government forces against rebels, according to a group of independent UN experts. Prigozhin and the Kremlin have denied any knowledge of Wagner.

Western officials described Wagner as the "thin end of the wedge” and a “Trojan horse” for a Russian effort to extend its influence covertly in resource-rich and unstable parts of the continent.