I knew that since the passage of great things like Nkrumah, Lumumba, Nasser, Nyerere, Mandela, Sankara and others, Africa had been searching for progressive heroes. He seized power in September 2022 through a coup. Propaganda where people are falling is cheap, not experts, and is inadequately made.
All the videos portray him as a hero who fights Western imperialism and accelerates the development of his country and people. Let’s take a look at an example of a recent video showing a large, low-cost, high-rise residential block that is allegedly built under Traore’s leadership. The claim is false. The construction site seen in the video is a national construction project in Tiziuzo, Algeria. The videos of the new roads, agriculture and industrial revolution are almost all the same. The viral video about Captain Ibrahim Traore, who refuses to visit US states, is fiction, as there was no such invitation. The Burkinabe leader was also said to have refused loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank since he took over his leadership. There are all these stories, and hundreds of them. It is simply manufactured to create images of progressive African heroes, and many of my progressive friends fall into it.
As Ebenezer Obadare recently pointed out, Traoré is deliberately always described with words such as “liberator,” “transformative,” “forethinking,” “exceptional,” “courage,” and “savior.” This makes both people both his and affection mixed with unmistakable admiration. From day one, his propaganda team presented him as the second coming of Thomas Sankara, the country’s former charismatic leader, who was assassinated in 1987 by a French-led plot.
In the video, Burkina Faso is engaged in an unprecedented path of economic and social development thanks to the achievements of its great leaders. That’s the “reality” of social media. In reality, Burkina Faso has been caught in a swirl of violence spilled from nearby Mali and Niger. Since 2015, regular attacks by armed jihadist groups linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have claimed tens of thousands of lives within the country, with terrorists controlling a significant portion of the territory. According to the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) 2025, Burkina Faso is the country most affected by global terrorism, breaking the charts for the second year in a row. The story is not told as domestic mass media and civil society were terrified to keep quiet. Those who tried to speak were sent to the front line and placed on the front line to be killed by terrorists.
It is important to note that the disinformation we are witnessing is not new and there is a strong reason why progressive Africans want to support Traole. The return of the army to power in Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Niger was accompanied by an orchestrated campaign against France as the underdeveloped architects of the Sahel countries and the destroyer of the fight against violent extremism. France is guilty of being indicted. Since 1990, 78% of the 27 coups in sub-Saharan Africa have occurred in French-speaking countries, making French hands visible to most people. This history has built up the justification for a recent coup. Colonel Abdullee Maiga, who was appointed prime minister by the Mali junta in September 2022, launched an attack on France criticizing “policies of neocolonialism, sloppy, paternalist and vengeance.” It made the junta popular, and others learned the story. In the three Sahel countries, anti-French Vitriol flourished – Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have concluded a long-standing agreement that allows the French troops to operate in their own countries.
French colonial rule established a political system designed to extract valuable resources, while using oppressive strategies to maintain control. The British did the same thing. The difference was that Britain learned to give up on maintaining the colonial system after independence, but France was adamant about raising and maintaining it. The French were very elaborate in maintaining the neocolonial system. Seven of the nine French-speaking countries in West Africa still use CFA francs, which are secured in the euro and guaranteed by France. Their foreign reserves are held by France under conditions that support the French economy. France also regularly intervened on behalf of unpopular pro-French leaders, forged defense agreements that it saw regularly intervene military-wise to maintain their power. In many cases, the action has strengthened the hands of corrupt and abusive figures, including former Chad president Idris Debbie, Cameroonian President Paul Biya and former Burkinabe president Blaze Compaole, creating additional challenges in the struggle for democracy. Africa needed heroes to uproot the French system, and the leaders of the junta made it happen and used it.
They received help from Russians, especially Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the controversial Wagner group. He had built bridges in French-speaking Africa. Certainly, one of his greatest talents was to develop elaborate and refined ways to weaponize the authentic and deep history of the frightening maintenance of the colony against the government and resources of France von Africa, whilst proposing liberation. The aim was to introduce Russian neocolonial control in the region through the means of establishing a military dictatorship. His methods are done through intentional and sustained manipulation through social media.
Methodology and practices in this field are developed by certain companies and states such as Russia, and can influence social and political processes, and achieve a given result despite the fact that their actions are toxic and anti-democratic. One of the most notorious practitioners is Cambridge Analytica, which has acquired and maintained a complex database of the likes, dislikes, pressures and political status of millions of social media users to provide tailored ads and controversy. This technique is based on the idea of ”information domination.” This is the idea that if you can capture all the information channels around a person and inject content around it, you can change your perception of what is actually happening. The Internet was supposed to have broken information monopoly by appearing to provide users with sources to a large number of diverse sources, but what often happens today is to lock people into this information coco, where there is not only bias but only one manipulative source.
At Francafrique, Wagner’s approach was to devote years of bombing to images bombing French Africa through Facebook, WhatsApp, Tic Tok, Twitter and other outlets. Prigozhin used the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the online “Troll Farms” and the Free Research and International Cooperation Association (AFRIC) for work. Today, in French Africa, there is information domination that terrorism remains for France and the solution is to attract Russians. Thousands of video images that appear to show French helicopters delivering arms to terrorists over the past 15 years have been shown to be fake. The video and associated propaganda created a very strong wave of antipathy towards France, the affected country. Therefore, Wagner successfully weaponized these stories in order to change the trend in public opinion towards France. They were successful.
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Many sophisticated social media influencers have appeared, some of which are in Wagner payroll, leading the Russian advocacy as a solution. Natalie Janmu (@Nath_yamb), Kemi Seba (@Kemiseba) French citizens originally included Benin Republic’s French citizens and French lecturer @Franklinnyamsi with Cameroonian roots. They are leading social media campaigns and are also active at summits in Russia and Africa. Over the past five years they have managed to create a strong connection between the idea that they must abandon France, the idea that most Africans support it, and that Russia will move forward. Africans must confront the order that the purpose of fighting neocolonialism must be autonomy rather than an alternative to neocolonial power. The most insidious aspect of this weaponization is the presentation of military ancestors as a path to salvation. They do so with the knowledge that today’s generation of African youth have no experience or knowledge of military domination, and no negative consequences of dictatorship.
I like the fact that three Juntas abandoned the French from their country’s control. However, I refuse to classify Captain Ibrahim as my hero. My heroes refuse to lie about their achievements, and they don’t terrorize their people.
Jiblin Ibrahim, a consultant/expert professor in political science and development, is a senior fellow at the Center for Democracy Development and chair of the Editorial Board of the Premium Times.
