In West Africa, Côte d’Ivoire is viewed as a bastion of stability with a strong track record of economic development. Experts believe that is why Russian disinformation operations in junta-led countries of the Sahel have targeted their coastal neighbor’s democratic process.
In August, several social media accounts with tens of thousands of followers spread false reports of violent unrest in the capital, Abidjan, during peaceful protests against President Alassane Ouattara’s reelection bid.
The accounts “attempted to show there had been an insurrection to incite unrest,” Côte d’Ivoire’s National Agency for Information System Security said. “According to our investigations, the accounts responsible for this [disinformation] campaign are mainly identified as having links to Burkina Faso and its supporters.”
A Burkinabe group with 116,000 followers claimed that “gunshots were reportedly heard in the west of the city and dozens of people were killed.”
Ouattara vehemently opposed the coups that brought military juntas to power in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. The three countries dropped out of the Economic Community of West African States and created their own Alliance of Sahel States, which is closely aligned with Russia. In March, a disinformation campaign alleged that Ouattara had died. In May, another spread false claims that Ouattara was captured in a coup. Ivoirian Communications Minister Amadou Coulibaly told the BBC that his cybersecurity department traced the fake...
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