From 250 to 700 dollars per article: How Russia influenced West African media content

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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. 

Media outlets identified by pro-Russian propaganda networks 

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.

‘A system of propaganda laundering’ 

"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. 

Read moreSecret documents reveal Russia’s cross-continental disinformation campaign

‘Ready to publish’ articles and the Senegalese media outlets unknowingly exposed

While it isn’t possible to independently verify these claims, the money that appears to have been spent by the Company rarely ends up in the pockets of media outlets. Instead, it seems likely that it is paid to intermediaries who then supply this content to news outlets.

This manner of influence is rooted in how the West African media landscape operates. Burkina Faso journalist Harouna Drabo says that, in West African media circles, this kind of article even has a nickname: PAD, which stands for “prêt à diffuser” or ready to publish. Drabo specialises in influence campaigns in French-speaking Africa. 

These transactions, ranging from 100 to 500 euros per article, can be conducted officially through the management of the media outlet. However, often, “the publication of these ready-to-publish articles goes through a journalist, and the editor-in-chief may not even be aware,” Drabo says. This means that these kinds of transactions can remain opaque, and often, there is little information about the origin of these articles. 

"It happens that sometimes the head of a publication isn’t even aware that this is happening in his newsroom,” Drabo says.  

Our team also interviewed Ibrahima Faye, the director of the Senegalese publication PressAfrik, who said that he is saddened by “a relatively frequent practice in Senegal and West Africa". He added that the economic context of the profession remains difficult. 

Faye, who is also president of the Association for Online Journalists in Senegal (APPEL), says that PressAfrik “rejects these propaganda and disinformation campaigns". In 2024, his media outlet became the first in Senegal to receive the Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI) label, an international standard for trustworthy journalism. 

"We never publish this content because if you publish it, then you contribute to the spread of disinformation and torpedo the ethical rules of our trade,” Faye said.  

There’s just one problem. A total of 13 articles listed in the Company spreadsheet were published in Faye’s outlet, PressAfrik. When we asked him about this, Faye was shocked. He said that the articles must have been published “fraudulently or in moments of inattention” and promised they would be removed from the site. The articles were removed in the hours after our conversation, including this article featuring the fake news story about army recruitment flyers supposedly posted by Ukrainian diplomats in the Ivory Coast.

A Word document sent by WhatsApp … and published as is 

So who is behind these articles and who benefits from the sums listed in the Company documents? For the time being, it is impossible to say. The journalist listed as the author of the articles published by PressAfrik, an editor who left the media outlet in December 2025, had not responded to our questions at the time of publication.

"It’s important to note that the average journalist often has direct access to a media outlet’s website because of the relationship of trust they share with their editors,” Drabo says. "So you might receive something and publish it. And the editor-in-chief or the director only finds out if there is an issue.”

Twenty articles published on the website Dakaractu.com appear in the Company documents. When our team contacted the media outlet about this, its director Sérigne Diagne initially stated "with the utmost firmness” that his media outlet had not received Russian money. Then, a few minutes later, he organised a call with the journalist credited as the author of these articles.

The journalist in question said that he was "shocked by these practices".

“I’ve never had anyone talk to me about money you could get from one structure or another,” he said. He said that he had only ever received articles from "contributors". He also mentioned receiving “pitches” from a “Malian source”, without being able to offer proof.  

Our team was able to obtain a Word document that proves that ready-to-publish articles were being sent to media outlets. The Word document is from Senego, a Senegalese media outlet with 500,000 followers on Facebook. A total of 32 articles published on Senego were listed in the Company documents. The publication’s director, Sidy Mbacké, said that he had no idea this was going on. 

However, we got more information when we spoke to one of the journalists who published some of these articles. While he said he had never received money, the man told our team that he had received these articles “from other colleagues”. 

“Amongst colleagues, we help one another out,” he said, asserting that the practice of publishing articles sent by other colleagues or intermediaries is common. 

This journalist, who asked to remain anonymous, showed us a discussion on WhatsApp from summer 2024 with one of his so-called “colleagues”. The colleague had shared an article in a Word document. The article, about an international news item, was critical of Western countries. A few hours later, the article, which appears in the leaked Company spreadsheet, was published on Senego’s website. No changes were made. 

Forbidden Stories investigated a similar practice taking place in the Central African Republic back in 2024. Journalist Ephrem Yalike acted as an intermediary between Russian agents and media outlets. All of the journalists who were contacted by Yalike said that they had not been in contact with Russian agents themselves and did not know they were being manipulated. 

In Chad, pro-Russian content has also found its way into a number of media outlets. At the same time, Russia was manoeuvring to distance Chadian authorities from the sphere of Western influence, as reported by RFI.

Sketchy signatures

This practice of publishing articles, sometimes without even reading them, raises ethical questions about the region’s newsrooms. Journalist and influence specialist Harouna Drabo says that a number of media outlets cited in the Company documents – outlets in Togo, Chad, the Ivory Coast and Senegal – are information portals that “capitalise on clicks and ads”. Because of the punishing cadence of publication – several journalists told us that they have to publish up to ten articles a day – journalists are more likely to accept pre-written articles without verifying the contents. 

Sometimes, the journalists who publish these articles don’t even look at the name on them. One name appears frequently in the articles placed by the Company: "Coulibaly Mamadou". Mamadou, often described as a “sociologist” or “political analyst”, was listed as the author on at least a dozen articles in at least eight different media outlets in West Africa over the period we analysed. 

We spoke to a number of the media outlets where his articles had been published, both in the period we analysed and more recently. All of them said that they were not in contact with a person with this name. Someone writing under this name for PressAfrik continued to publish articles right up to October 2025. Faye, the head of the publication, confirmed to us that no one working in his newsroom had heard of this person. We heard similar accounts from the other media outlets we contacted. One media outlet from Togo, for example, said they had never had contact with someone with this name, even though they had published his articles.  

Bamada.net also said that they did not know this person, despite the fact that they published several articles on their site. They also admitted that they did not verify the identities of their contributors. 

"These people – as well as almost all of the other contributors – send us these articles from simple email accounts like xxx@yahoo.fr. Often, the names on their emails have nothing to do with their real names. Only their signature at the end of the article makes us believe it is them.” 

However, we found no evidence of a sociologist or analyst writing under this name. 

This case evokes the case of Grégoire Cyrille Dongobada and a number of other fake pen names documented by the magazine Jeune Afrique in April 2025. Dongobada, described as a “Central African military observer and researcher in political studies”, was listed as the author of anti-Western articles published in a large number of media outlets, including Senego, ActuNiger, Senenews and Mali Actu. These newsrooms received these articles from an intermediary in Togo.  

‘Who are these documents for?’

While we were able to prove that a number of the articles listed in these internal documents were placed and disseminated by intermediaries, the question of what impact these Russian campaigns have had remains. 

Maxime Audinet highlights that the documents don’t show “qualitative criteria, as if the impact and success of these operations were implied. However, it isn’t actually clear. We must ask the question, who were the leaked documents for?” 

"We should take all of the numbers in these documents with a grain of salt,” the researcher said, underlining the “endemic and intrinsic corruption” within the world of Russian propaganda, which was already well-reported during the Wagner era. As for the sums listed in these documents, it is hard to know, for example, if this was the price really paid for the articles. The numbers seem, in some cases, to be inflated. 

These leaked documents are, in fact, for internal use and aim to show the efficiency of these campaigns. Reading all of the archives reveals how the Russian agents were trying to show the influence they were having in Africa. For example, some of the lists feature duplicate articles, as if to augment the appearance of their work. 

"What these documents show, outside of this massive laundering attempt, is ultimately the ability to capitalise on corruption,” the researcher said. “And, moreover, to establish an informational corruption operation to legitimise the Russian presence.”

Forbidden Stories contacted actors within the Company as well as Russia’s foreign intelligence service. Neither responded to their questions. 

This article has been translated from the original in French by Brenna Daldorph.