Russia’s Latest Target in Africa: U.S.-Funded Anti-Malaria Programs

BOBO-DIOULASSO, Burkina Faso – The scientists sifting through thousands of genetically modified mosquito larvae in a laboratory in Burkina Faso were trying to stop the spread of malaria, one of the biggest killers on the African continent.

But in the pro-Russian propaganda telling of their work, the scientists, helped by funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, were not protecting local people against malaria, they were infecting them.

“Since these mosquitoes have arrived in Burkina, we’ve noticed an increase of malaria and dengue fever,” Egountchi Behanzin, a French-Togolese activist who often posts pro-Russian content, said in an interview.

Behanzin could not cite any scientific evidence, and researchers say there are no grounds for such a claim. But his anti-Western messages, and his praise for Russia in Africa, are shared daily among his more than 600,000 followers on social media.

His posts are seen as only one element in a recent pro-Russian disinformation operation that is targeting U.S.-funded health care programs in Africa. The attacks come at a time when ambitious initiatives and vaccines are being rolled out on a continent shaken by several epidemics, including a deadly outbreak of mpox.

The apparent aim is to undermine public trust and bolster Russia’s steady attempt to weaken Western interests in Africa, according to U.S. and European officials.

“The Russian Federation’s narrative drowned out the U.S. government’s in the past years,” said Gen. Michael Langley, the head of the military’s Africa Command, at a Senate hearing in March. He asked for additional resources, “especially in the information operations” to counter the Russian narrative.

Since 2022, Russia has sponsored 80 documented disinformation campaigns in 22 African countries, more than any other actor, according to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.

In these campaigns, paid African influencers and Russian state-controlled media amplify each other, “creating the repetitive echo chambers in which disinformation narratives become rote,” according to the center.

The campaigns have included articles and videos pushing for the departure of U.S. and other Western troops from countries like Mali or Niger, whose military-led governments have aligned themselves with Russia in recent years.

Western-backed health initiatives in Africa are one of Russia’s latest targets, a scenario reminiscent of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union accused the United States of spreading AIDS on the continent.

The State Department says that African Initiative, a news outlet backed by Russia’s intelligence services, has spun similar accounts, including “disinformation regarding an outbreak of a mosquito-borne viral disease.”

“All these narratives can usually be traced back to someone close to the Russian government or Russian institutions,” said Athandiwe Saba, a managing editor at Code for Africa, a nonprofit that uses data analysis to investigate sources of disinformation on the continent.

In Burkina Faso, about 40 researchers at Target Malaria, a nonprofit backed by the Gates Foundation and other Western institutions, are working to create a species of mosquito that will not transmit malaria. That disease killed nearly 600,000 people in Africa in 2022 – 95% of deaths from malaria worldwide – according to the World Health Organization. The Gates Foundation is supporting similar programs in the East African nations of Djibouti and Uganda.

“Every Burkinabe citizen would like to see this plague gone,” Souleymane Sankara, an entomologist with Target Malaria, said on a recent morning in a laboratory in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso’s second-largest city.

The Target Malaria researchers released their first swarm of genetically modified mosquitoes in 2019 in Bana, a village of 1,000 inhabitants in western Burkina Faso. A second batch is scheduled to be released in Bana next year.

Behanzin, the activist, has argued, without providing evidence, that cases of malaria increased in the village after Target Malaria released its mosquitoes. But when asked, he could not provide data nor the names of any scientist or doctor who could support his claims.

Behanzin claimed that local leaders in Bana were illiterate and had been tricked by the researchers into allowing the release. But a recent visit by New York Times reporters to the village suggested otherwise.

The village elders said they had read and signed a contract to permit the experiment. They said that they had not noticed any surge of dengue fever cases.

Bana’s imam, Seydou Sanogo, said that cases of malaria had actually decreased since the study started, perhaps since villagers learned from the researchers how to cover toilet lids and properly get rid of wastewater to reduce mosquito breeding grounds.

“They made us part of the project since the beginning and clearly explained their goals,” Sanogo said about Target Malaria. “When we have questions or concerns, we raise them.”

Nevertheless, the notion has spread in Burkina Faso that researchers like Sankara and his colleagues are co-conspirators, indoctrinated by Gates to spread a deadly disease to their countrymen. Late last year and throughout the spring, social media users accused Gates of seeking to use scientific research as a cover for population control in Africa.

Pro-Russian, Pan-African influencers with large followings then echoed unsubstantiated claims that genetically modified mosquitoes bred by Target Malaria were causing a deadly outbreak of dengue fever, even though malaria and dengue fever are transmitted by different species of mosquitoes.

In a written statement, Dr. Paulin Basinga, the director for Africa at the Gates Foundation, said that the programs it supports are developed in collaboration with local governments and communities.

“Any claims that our initiatives contribute to the spread of diseases are unfounded and detract from the critical goal of saving lives,” Basinga said.

Behanzin has denied receiving funding from Russian organizations or being part of a Russian disinformation campaign in Africa. But he called Russia’s policy in Africa “a very beautiful thing” and added that African countries “should stop all cooperation with the West.”

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Russia isn’t the only country seeking to influence public opinion in Africa. The United States and some European countries have a long tradition of similar operations, both official and covert, historians have shown.

The reception of Western health care initiatives in Africa is also fraught because colonial powers once imposed medical campaigns against sleeping sickness, syphilis and other diseases, eroding trust, according to studies. More recently, long delays in rolling out COVID-19 vaccines in Africa led to widespread resentment.

That has made health care a ripe topic for Russian misinformation operations, which rely on a vast web of Telegram channels, Kremlin-funded news outlets and local activists and journalists.

Afrique Média, a television channel based in Cameroon, signed a partnership with RT, the state-funded Russian television network, last year. Now, the channel has more than 1 million subscribers on YouTube, hundreds of thousands more than it did before the Russian partnership.

In September, Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused RT of secretly running an online platform, African Stream, which he described as an outlet for “Kremlin propagandists” that purported to cover African countries and their diasporas.

(END OPTIONAL TRIM.)News outlets favorable to Russia are increasingly dominating national narratives in West and Central African countries where military juntas have strengthened their cooperation with the Kremlin and silenced independent journalists. Some of those countries, like Burkina Faso, have also suspended Western outlets such as Radio France Internationale, Voice of America and the BBC.

The United States is now scrambling to respond. In the spring, it signed a partnership with the government of Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso’s neighbor, to fight disinformation – the first of its kind with an African country.

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Details of the partnership have not been made public, but Amadou Coulibaly, a spokesperson for Ivory Coast’s government, said that the country would work on joint initiatives with USAID and the Global Engagement Center, the State Department’s agency fighting foreign disinformation.

“We’re going to benefit from American instructors,” Coulibaly said. “The Americans are taking this very seriously.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Souleymane Sankara, an entomologist with Target Malaria, works in a lab May 1 in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso. Scientists fighting the spread of infectious diseases in Africa have been targeted online with disinformation from pro-Russian activists, part of an effort to spread fear and mistrust of the West.