00:06 clip audio: The steady growth in consumption, which is recorded in Nigeria by statistics, does not have a real therapeutic effect, and Nigerian citizens are used as a free clinical base.

00:18 Paul Brandus: A Russian official on Sputnik Africa spreading Moscow's claim that the United States is using citizens of Nigeria and other African nations for biological experiments. This sort of information warfare is hardly new. Back in season one of this podcast series, we told you how back in the 1980s, The Soviets planted a story in India claiming that the AIDS virus was linked to similar US experiments. The story was a virus itself spreading rapidly from one small pro-Soviet paper in India to circle the globe. That was four decades ago. Today, the Russians understand that thanks to accelerants like social media and artificial intelligence, false claims can spread even faster. False claims, also known as disinformation. I'm Paul Brandus, and that's the name of this podcast series, Disinformation, a co-production of Evergreen Podcasting and Emergent Risk International, a global risk advisory firm. ERI's Chief Executive Officer Meredith Wilson is away, but, and for the first time, we'll hear from Senior Intelligence Analyst Cameron Evers. Africa has long been a proxy for the geostrategic competition between the United States and the Soviet Union-slash-Russia. Of course, China is also a player, but in this episode, it's Russia's information warfare efforts in Africa that we'll focus on. It seems ironic that Russia can even claim that America is using biology for malicious purposes in Africa. Just to give one example to the contrary, a two-decade American effort to combat the AIDS virus in Africa has saved, according to U.S. estimates, some 25 million lives. The program, if you've never heard of it, is called PEPFAR. James Rubin is special envoy of the State Department's Global Engagement Center. He says the Russians are trying to counter this with disinformation, Emin says no words about their information warfare efforts in Africa.

02:45 James Rubin: What's really so dastardly about what the Russians are doing, normally the Russian government and the United States have geopolitical debates about the Ukraine war, about policies in Europe, But in this case, the Russian government, through its intelligence services, are really responsible directly for killing African. Think about it. By deterring African citizens and governments from using Western health services, African people, men, women, and children, might not go to the facilities where life-saving health uh, services are available. They might not go to the, uh, uh, get their vaccines, get their healthcare because they've been misled into thinking that it's part of some conspiracy theory. The Russians have invented. So this isn't just a dangerous, uh, for us, Russia relations, Russia's intelligence services by doing this, they are showing they don't care about African live because they are deterring Africans from getting urgently needed health care that everyone knows in Africa has saved lives. And instead, they're making up stories about biological weapons testing and conspiracy theories that they've used in Ukraine and elsewhere. And that's what's such a tragedy about this. It's not just the foreign policy consequences, but it's the lives and health and welfare of individual men, women, and children in Africa are being put at risk by the Russians.

04:26 Paul Brandus: Speaking on the Voice of America, Rubin explains Russian tactics and Moscow's overall campaign, which is called the African Initiative.

04:36 James Rubin: Well, we do know that a man named Artem Kareev is the leader of the African Initiative. He's called the chief editor. This is a guy who previously worked in Latvia helping a member of parliament avoid getting kicked out of the country and stuff like that. You can imagine what his real job is. And what he's doing is hiring local individuals, some of whom come from the Purgosian enterprise, which has brought such chaos to West Africa and such damage to the people of Africa. And they're collecting these nefarious characters to try to persuade Africans to not get needed health care. Think of how monstrous a disinformation campaign this is. This isn't just one of these war and peace things between the United States and Russia. This is something that's costing lives for Africans. And I certainly hope that everyone who make is made aware of that. What we're doing this for is we're trying to inoculate the journalists, the government, the people of Africa, to a Russian disinformation campaign that would prevent people from getting their needed medical service.

05:52 Paul Brandus: One way of countering Russian efforts, Rubin says, is by pre-bunking the tactic of sharing your information quickly and openly, getting in front of the other guy's narrative, if you will.

06:05 James Rubin: Well, you can be sure that we have been working closely with our African partners throughout the region. And we know that we are operating at a very, very early stage. You know, we got some very, very special information here that allowed us to expose Russia's intelligence services. And we are sharing that information with our partners. And we're doing it very, very early because we are hoping that by coming out with this information so early that we will prevent the disinformation campaign from gaining traction, that will prevent it from spreading across the region. If Russia gets its way, they're hoping that Uh, dozens of African countries will, uh, will not use Western healthcare, will not benefit from these hundreds of billions of dollars. The United States and Western countries and private individuals have been spending to save African lives. And if we get this early, if we inoculate the people, the journalists and others to at least raise the question when they see these conspiracy stories, where did it come from? Is this from the Russians? Does this have a maiden in the Kremlin stamp on it? We hope that it will avoid the damage that would otherwise be done.

07:28 Paul Brandus: And yet the Russians have gotten not a small amount of traction in Africa, says Dan Whitman, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He spent most of his career in the Foreign Service, including postings in some eight African countries. He says that in terms of information warfare, no matter what the United States does, it is at a disadvantage to Russia in one key respect.

07:56 Dan Whitman: The United States government works at a great disadvantage because we tell the truth. When you are running a social media campaign, not only is there no obligation to tell the truth, you have no interest in doing so. So there's a big, big difference here. And we go into this battle with our arms tied behind our back because we say, and I love VOA for doing this, we verify, we check sources, we make sure that what we're saying is true. The other side does not do that. Russian disinformation has an enormous strategic advantage. We need to find a way which is transparent and which does not play tricks and which does not lower itself to the level of lying and disinformation. We need a way of answering this other than simply putting out a statement saying this is untrue. These statements have no resonance at all.

08:56 Paul Brandus: Let's take a short break here. When we come back, we'll hear from Cameron Evers, Senior Analyst covering Sub-Saharan Africa for Emergent Risk International.

09:08 Cameron Evers: This series on disinformation is a co-production of Evergreen Podcasts and Emergent Risk International, a global risk advisory firm. Emergent Risk International, we build intelligent solutions that find opportunities in a world of risk.

09:31 Paul Brandus: Welcome back for more on Russian influence efforts in Africa. Let's bring in Cameron Evers of Emergent Risk International. He's a senior intelligence analyst covering Sub-Saharan Africa. There have been a lot of reports, Cameron, that the Russians, the U.S. government says, are pushing a lot of these false claims of U.S. biological testing in Africa. They've done this for a long time, of course. What can you tell us about this?

10:03 Cameron Evers: Yeah, so there are some wacky conspiracy theories going around right now about U.S. health programs in Africa. And the State Department actually put out a warning in response saying that these theories are coming from Russian disinformation, right, through a new campaign. And this is by a little-known information agency called Africa Initiative that popped up back in 2023. And it looks like the State Department announcement is a response to an investigative journalism report by a Latvian-based outlet called The Insider, and that came out on February 8th. I don't know, actually, though, how the State Department, like, initially discovered this campaign, and these kind of announcements from them are a little bit rare, so it's definitely interesting. But The Insider article has this title, right, it's really catchy, it's, Russian Intelligence Attempts to Terrify Africa with Tales of American Mosquitoes and Biolabs. And then they detail this, and they're talking about the Africa Initiative, which is, again, backed by Russian intelligence and has been spreading these theories, right? And these theories include Bill Gates and pharmaceutical companies are using secret biological experiments on Africans by pretending to vaccinate them, but they're actually using them as guinea pigs. And Western-led health programs are causing disease in Africa, such as disease from genetically modified mosquitoes. And then the biological experiment theory appears to be a sequel from a similar disinformation campaign that was launched during the start of the Ukraine war. And they're using social media, local health conferences actually in Africa, and in the recruitment and training of local journalists, and even street graffiti in Africa to spread these conspiracies. State Department saying that this Africa initiative, they've actually opened up offices in Burkina Faso and Mali. And they've started spreading these theories last year. and they're gearing up to do more of them in 2024. And the guy behind this, the Russian intelligence chief, he's a guy named Artem Kiriev. He's an FSB operative, and it looks like he launched something similar called Rus Afro. And both of these campaigns have been translated into a lot of African languages.

12:03 Paul Brandus: Now, the question is, do these, first of all, what's the Russian I think that's rather obvious, but just tell us a little bit why the Russians are doing this. And the important question to follow up with is, is it gaining any traction? I mean, to your knowledge, do folks in these African countries that are being exposed to this propaganda, this disinformation, is it having an impact?

12:31 Cameron Evers: So the first on the first question, why are they doing this at all? Obviously, information, psychological warfare, influence operations are a huge part of Russian political strategy. And that extends to an extent to Africa when they're there. But we could also ask, you know, so why is Russia interested in Africa in the first place? And my answer here is that, you know, really, Russia saw a huge opportunity to get around sanctions, and Russian insiders In Moscow, they saw a way to make a lot of money and get mining resources. So Russia does not have a lot of options or allies these days. Russia, they really scaled up their diplomatic inroads dramatically after sanctions first hit them back when they annexed Crimea in 2014. So ever since then, we see this big pattern of Russia returning to Africa. after many decades where they weren't doing a lot. That was kind of the post-Cold War, 90s, 2000s phase when they retreated from the region a bit. To the same year, 2014, that's when Wagner got its start, right? So Wagner, the private military group connected to Putin's inner circle, and then they first showed up to Africa in 2017. And they've never really left. They've transformed in different phases, but they've stayed there since 2017. So essentially, Russia needed a lot of friends over 2014 to get around sanctions, etc. And they saw this opportunity because Russia has something unique that they can offer to really any poor country or any country that needs them for war. But that's weapons and military expertise, and a lot of these countries don't have them. And then what does Africa have in return? beneficial mining arrangements, and they even change the law sometimes to help the Russians. So this situation, I would say, is kind of similar. Do you remember during the Syrian Civil War, suddenly Russia was there too, right? And in that case, they wanted the warm water port in the Mediterranean. In Africa, it's a mineral well.

14:12 Paul Brandus: Which brings us, Cameron says, to the disinformation angle.

14:16 Cameron Evers: And then the disinformation angle is used essentially as a way to enhance this. So Russia, they're kind of weaker on the world stage than they have been in the past, or the Soviet past. You know, they don't have economic ties to Africa that Europe, China, or the US have, not even by a long shot. So if Russia wants to kind of curry favor, it has to use other means, that includes disinformation, to bolster its image bigger than it actually is. You know, military wonks will refer to this as hybrid warfare, right? Which in this case, with these bio rumors going around. It's them taking pot shots at the West. Does this work? Are these campaigns effective? Well, the first results of this disinformation campaign that's going after Western drugs and health programs, according to the journalist who broke the story, it looks like they aren't reaching that many people. So by that yardstick, it doesn't look very effective. The Africa Initiative group, For all of uh, I believe the month of january got less than 20 000 visitors for example to its publications Um, and but I do think that the campaign Uh, you know while it's normal for russian disinformation in terms of their history This one does have a little bit more of a business impact. Um, because it's a problem for drug companies and health related humanitarian groups Obviously can damage their reputations and even cause them to be targeted with violence um So in that way it could be effective in stirring up a little bit of animosity on the ground We actually saw that during the ebola outbreak. Um In 2015 in west africa and guinea so you had angry mobs that are stirred up by conspiracy theories There was that there was this western plot, um to harvest the organs of africans. Um And so these angry mobs thought that that the west was there These health workers from red cross were there to do that instead of actually help and they actually attack them um But these impacts, you know, the effectiveness, I think, hinge on whether or not these new Africa initiative conspiracies can kind of gain wider traction beyond just the small audiences that they've done so far.

16:15 Paul Brandus: So far, it looks like they have not, in your view, gotten a lot of attraction. You know, what's interesting here is that last summer, after this, I guess you could call it, an attempted revolt by Yevgeny Prigozhin to move on Moscow. He stopped short of that, of course, and then he died in the plane crash. The Wagner Group, which had a huge footprint in Africa, I think it's now called the Africa Corps, so he's long gone, but the legacy of Prigozhin remains in Africa. Tell me about the Africa Corps in general, I mean, beyond disinformation. What about the larger Russian efforts beyond the disinformation sphere in Africa? Again, Prigozhin is long gone, but the Russians still remain. So they still have a pretty large footprint in general, it would appear, right?

17:10 Cameron Evers: Yeah, so it looks like they've transferred ownership of the program, you know, Prigozhin's out. And now it's headed under the Russian military of defense, Ministry of Defense. And it looks like they've continued things kind of smoothly, actually. And the trend there, Russia's military intelligence service, the GRU, has taken over the day-to-day operations. And like you said, they've changed the name to Afrika Korps, which is kind of a ridiculous reference, if it is indeed a reference to the World War II Afrika Korps. But what's interesting is that they've actually moved what was previously Wagner, which was kind of a covert, or at least they had plausible deniability. Now they're in overt territory, right? Now it's literally the Russian Ministry of Defense that's orchestrating this. They don't have this kind of cover they used to, where is Russia in Africa or not? Is it really official or not? Is the Kremlin behind it? So they've kind of moved into overt territory. And this disinformation campaign recently looks like it was actually the first disinformation campaign or at least a larger push from this new outfit. But to your question about like what What are they doing here besides just information? Like, what's the context? They're doing a whole lot of military support to countries that are specifically fighting jihadist insurgencies across the Sahel region. So they're propping up some of these governments that otherwise might not make it, right? They're kind of worried about regime survival. And then in other places too, like Central African Republic, where they've been there with hundreds of troops for many years now. So they're kind of doing this regime stabilization package that they're selling They're marketing themselves as we can we can protect you. You don't need um to have elections necessarily. We can protect you as long as we get First dibs on some of these uh mining contracts Coming back to the disinformation as we wrap up here.

19:01 Paul Brandus: What can be done? to thwart These efforts you've indicated that the russians are not getting a lot of uh traction, but they're not going away What is the us doing to? counter all of this

19:15 Cameron Evers: The US is doing a couple of things. They do help fund, this is through the State Department, they'll fund Media and Information Literacy Initiative, so MIL, and they'll also do, they also fund a lot of just journalism and fact-checking, and the UN funds these things too, and a lot of Western countries fund them. And those are underway across the whole continent of Africa. I've seen their work. There's a lot of great organizations teaching and training on media and information literacy. There's also a whole slew of counter disinformation groups and fact checkers, kind of in the same category. These include the ones in Africa, include PESA check, Africa check, and Code for Africa. I've met great journalists and teachers from these groups. They're making a big difference in getting out the facts and truth behind some of these angles and getting rid of these myths and rumors and conspiracies when they start to pop up. But in terms of like nation-state responses, what can the U.S. do or what can the West do? I think we can attempt to counter-program Russian disinformation by boosting the positive aspects of the West's non-military role in Africa and kind of get away from our more militarized, you know, colonial reputation by emphasizing, you know, what does the West offer that's new and equal. That means talking about cooperation, partnerships, African agency, equal relationships, and in business deals, and how can we make money together and grow together and work towards renewable energy together. I think if we stress these angles and the huge economic investment going on right now from the West, definitely compared to what Russia's doing, we're a lot bigger in terms of the money going in. So I think if we emphasize that, you know, money talks and that'll help us. And I think other advantages that we have is that, you know, we can keep stressing democracy. You don't have to throw that out just because they're offering a dictatorship and maybe a little more stability or they'll give you security guarantees. I mean, we can still, at the end of the day, say, wouldn't you rather vote for your leader rather than some guy who climbed out of the barracks, you know, to the top that way? I mean, I think democracy still has soft power in these places that we can talk about.

21:22 Paul Brandus: Thanks to Cameron Evers of Emergent Risk International. Sound from the Voice of America. Our sound designer and editor, Noah Foutz. Audio engineer, Nathan Corson. Executive producers, Michael Dealoia and Gerardo Orlando. And on behalf of Meredith Wilson, I'm Paul Brandus. Thanks so much for listening.