Faux pas
The scourge of fake Pan-African Twitter accounts and their contribution to misinformation.
Have you ever lain awake at night and wondered why Africa doesn’t have a single currency, who killed Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara, why NATO forces launched an operation in Libya in 2011, and why the DRC remains underdeveloped despite its immense mineral wealth?
Probably not - as there are clear and well-documented answers to all of these questions.
*Puts on tinfoil hat*
But what if you are wrong? What if the West has fed you lies, and that there exists a cohort of Pan-African Twitter/X accounts which are seeking to spread the real truth about Africa?
Africa Archive, African Index, Africa Stream, Typical African, The African, Africa Facts - or simply “African” - are among dozens of the named and verified Twitter accounts that have attempted to break the information shackles of the West by bringing you the truth and countering the lies we have been told about the continent.
Sankara was killed during a coup organised by Blaise Compaore in 1987 due to divergent governance positions and interpersonal disputes. Wrong! Sankara was killed by CIA operatives to prevent him from carrying out widespread reforms that would reduce French influence!
Muammar Gaddafi was killed as a result of Libya’s civil war (ignore this over simplification). Wrong! Gaddafi was killed by NATO for the sole purpose of stopping him from creating a single African currency that would topple the USD!
Perpetual conflict in the DRC and absence of material development is a culmination of a myriad of factors, rooted in corruption, regional wars and dynamics, domestic conflicts and its colonial history. Wrong! France and the CIA are ensuring that that DRC remains unstable so they can extract the country’s minerals!
These are some of the most recurring pieces of information shared by the last bastion of Pan-Africans in the world; have you exited the Matrix yet?
*Removes tinfoil hat* - now that we are back to reality…stay with me.
Conspiracies of this nature are by no means novel, and could be found in the purple haze of university dorms populated by international relations and philosophy students, discussed on early internet message boards, sent via text on Nokia 3310s, and spouted at Christmas by your aunt who went to Malawi and for some reason now identifies with the Yoruba in Nigeria. These conspiracies have also circulated on Twitter since it first made the mistake of allowing people to just speak things into the void with authority. Also, lets be clear, there is a case for such conspiracies to spread; the CIA did plan to kill the DRC’s Patrice Lumumba in 1961 (a nugget of truth thrown into the void to justify the other crazy stuff).
Nonetheless, some of the wilder claims have always been chalked up to conspiracy theories with modest moderation - and what can be assumed as general human intellect - thereby limiting their reach and impact. This, however, has changed over the past 2/3 years as the reach and perverseness of conspiracies and misinformation surrounding the continent have become particularly prevalent.
Twitter accounts touting anti- NATO, Western, French, CIA, and pro-Sankara conspiracies would maybe be read by a few thousand people in 2018. In 2024, however, accounts espousing insane theories about Africa and its history are being read by millions and reshared by thousands, while the number of verified accounts putting out this content has grown ten-fold.
The start of this trend escalated around the time the jelly doughnut of a man Elon Musk decided to buy Twitter and restructure verified accounts. It was specifically a decision by Musk to start monetising “engagements” that ramped up misinformation; the more comments, likes, views and reshares of posts = the more money an account could earn. Unsurprisingly, faux Pan-African accounts that had modest followings were some of the first to become verified and join Elon’s paid engagement programme. The visibility boost function for verified accounts suddenly saw these modest accounts explode from hundreds or thousands of followers, to hundreds of thousands and in some cases, nearly 1 million followers.
Suddenly, the motivation to put out content accelerated. There are only so many conventional conspiracy theories about the continent you can repeat until you need to create new ones, spread false news, or decide to rewrite African history as a means to sustain your engagement.
This is where we found ourselves in 2024. After deriving a following through Sankara and Ghaddafi conspiracies, our last bastions of Pan-Africanism truth have had to get creative to ensure the well does not dry up. Mixed in between borderline Playboy content (disguised as a discussion on culture), these accounts have decided to exploit the media vacuums in parts of the continent and/or latch themselves onto some of the more dynamic countries in Africa.
What better place to do this is the Sahel, where there have been 3 coups in 4 years. Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso have all been taken over by military juntas who kicked out the French - our Pan-African bastion’s heroin dream. In another win for our favourite accounts, these juntas have increasingly banned foreign media. Turns out just changing the government doesn’t fix your worsening insurgencies that have prompted repeated coups. The very secure junta heads seemingly did not like reports of human rights abuses, mass deaths of soldiers and worsening security under their helm. Naturally, all three have kicked out foreign media - especially the French (it is a fetish at this point).
These junta leaders fear not, however, as there are dozens of true African patriots ready to sing their praise on social media and spread the news you want the population and world to hear (not quite). In the wake of all three coups, there was a surge in reports on social media about how each junta had nationalised the mines, kicked out all French firms and banned Western firms from uranium mining. Such claims were viewed by millions, shared over 100,000 times and flooded with comments by verified Twitter accounts supporting the move. It was, however, a bit awkward when Burkina Faso didn’t have uranium, and that there were no major French miners in these countries. This has not stopped our Twitter African patriots from spreading the good word about the revolutionary regimes! It is Burkina Faso where these accounts have found their true home. Of course, Burkina Faso’s youthful junta leader Ibrahim Traore is being compared to Sankara - who is at any moment about to be killed by the CIA!
From Traore banning all gold exports, “nationalising” mines, and - again - stopping uranium exports, our young leader has really been sticking it to NATO and the CIA! However, none of this is accurate despite reaching millions of accounts and even being picked up by AI news bots and smaller continental news outlets since early 2024.
In the absence of credible media in the country, the traction gained by such stories - and sudden questions by investors - was unsurprising. While perhaps somewhat beneficial to the junta’s at the start to guide public opinion, these accounts have now become a bit of a problem for our tough military men who are trying to attract new investment. In late August, Traore’s spokesperson put out a statement calling for investors and foreign governments to only acknowledge statements from the official media wing and ignore social media. This was in response to wide reaching reports that Burkina Faso had nationalised British two mines, cancelled its IMF programme, and banned gold exports in August; even the bloody Financial Times claimed Burkina Faso had nationalised its mines - shame on you FT. These claims were far from the truth and a bit awkward for an interim government that has been quite considerate of investors.
Oh no, who could have seen this coming after banning all independent media?
While creating an obvious information issue in a variety of jurisdictions, these accounts have also presented a prime opportunity for calculated misinformation by certain governments. Russia’s efforts on the continent in this regard are well documented.
Continental governments have also sought to take advantage of the reach of these accounts. Rwanda is particularly guilty, as it continues to mount a mass disinformation campaign to justify its backing of the M23 rebel group in DRC. In August, a flurry of videos showing Congolese residents celebrating M23 appeared on several of our favourite Pan-African accounts; according to our truthers, this was clear evidence that the Congolese people wanted M23 to liberate them. Coincidentally, these videos surfaced just as reports emerged about how Rwanda was sending back Congolese refugees it had housed under UN programmes into M23-held areas. This was presumably to counter the reports of mass exodus of residents from M23 held areas due to a myriad human of rights abuses by the rebel group.
So where does this leave us? Its clear Elon has little intention of cleaning up the hellscape of Twitter - let alone the scourge of faux Pan-African accounts and their contribution to misinformation on the continent. Perhaps the most terrifying endgame is when these accounts begin actively creating and/or sharing sophisticated deep fake AIs that have already emerged. This video of Kenya’s president William Ruto is a prime example - he does not speak French, but without a second look one wouldn’t think twice about the content of this video.
Africa watchers will need to tread carefully over the coming years, create stronger source networks and rely less and less on social media for information when it comes to breaking events on the continent - lest we become the very thing we are trying to fight against.
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