African Initiative, and Its Absence

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Early last year, Jill Biden, the first lady, visited Namibia and Kenya, where she observed the effects of a historic drought. President Joe Biden said ahead of time that his wife’s visit would draw attention to the consequences of Russia blocking grain exports as part of its war with Ukraine, while the Washington Post described the trip as evidence of “the administration’s aggressive new push to shore up relationships with Africa in the face of increasing influence and investment on the continent from China and Russia.” As the same paper noted at the time, however, “the entire news cycle around her Africa trip—at least the American news cycle—became subsumed” by a remark that she made to an Associated Press reporter all but confirming that her husband would run for reelection, then a hot topic of will-he/won’t-he media intrigue. “When CNN released its first clip of a one-hour special the network is airing about the trip later this week,” the Post reported, “it also focused on 2024.”

It was suggested that Joe Biden would himself visit Africa later last year—he had said himself that the US was “all in on Africa’s future”—but he didn’t; he was then supposed to travel to the continent in the weeks leading up to the election, but that trip was also postponed as a major hurricane barreled toward Florida. This week, he finally made it, stopping briefly in Cape Verde, where he thanked the prime minister for the country’s support for Ukraine against Russia, before arriving yesterday in Angola, where he was scheduled to visit a museum about slavery and check in on a major US-backed rail project, a move widely interpreted as a challenge to China’s investments in Angola and elsewhere on the continent. But now, of course, Biden is visiting as a lame duck—the reelection campaign that was trailed by his wife having ended in ignominy even before his vice president, Kamala Harris, lost to Donald Trump last month. As a result, “his trip is less significant than it would’ve been otherwise,” Louw Nel, a political analyst in South Africa, told the US-backed international broadcaster Voice of America. “It really feels like an afterthought to his presidency.” (Biden did visit Africa once before as president: to attend a climate summit in Egypt in 2022.)

Speaking with reporters, John Kirby, a top Biden spokesperson, pushed back on the notion that “this is sort of a Johnny-come-lately trip at the very end,” pointing out prior US investment in Africa on Biden’s watch and visits by senior administration figures. Asked what the US was offering to the average Angolan—who is nineteen years old and not necessarily attuned to “this Cold War sort of balance of power struggle on the continent”—Kirby again seemed to reject the premise. “There is no cold war on the continent,” he said. “We’re not asking countries to choose between us and Russia and China.”

And yet there is, at minimum, a great-power competition for influence playing out across Africa at the moment—and according to many experts, the US is losing to China and Russia as things stand. Media narratives that talk in such terms can be prone to ignore the vastness of Africa and the varied local dynamics on the ground. (One journalist in a different part of the world once memorably described this sort of coverage to me as “chess-metaphor journalism,” where different powers are said to control different “pieces” with “no thought or consideration for the people who actually live on those squares on the board.”) And yet the struggle for influence is real—and in addition to its economic and security dynamics, it has an important informational component that is too often overlooked. The story of Chinese and Russian efforts to seed favorable narratives across African media is a fascinating one. It is not directly tied to Biden’s trip; indeed, its most interesting recent manifestations have arguably played out in a collection of countries to Angola’s north. But it is a story that highlights the broader challenges facing not only US interests in Africa, but those of other Western allies (not least France, a former colonial power in much of the continent). And the circumstances of Biden’s trip—and what we are and aren’t hearing about it—point once again to the sad impression that, in the US, much of all this feels like an afterthought.

The reporter who complained to me about “chess-metaphor journalism” did so in the context of a newsletter that I wrote last year about China’s efforts to influence the media in the Pacific Island region, via everything from the planting of friendly op-eds in local outlets to exchange programs and funding for local journalists. This reflects a global trend—one I also wrote about earlier this year, in the context of cooperation agreements between Chinese state media and counterparts in Serbia—and sure enough, it has played out in Africa, too, in similar ways. According to Joshua Eisenman, an expert at the American Foreign Policy Council who wrote about the phenomenon for Foreign Policy last year, the Chinese news agency Xinhua has more bureaus in Africa than any other media agency, and Chinese state outlets have hired recognizable local journalists. The impact of this has been questionable—one 2021 study suggested that British and French outlets still appeared to be more influential in many African countries—but the same study found that Chinese sources at least had more influence than US media. “The US government has yet to overtly contest China’s anti–United States propaganda in Africa,” Eisenman wrote last year. “The primary reason for this appears to be Washington’s long-standing bipartisan neglect of Africa.”

Russia has sought to seed its own propaganda narratives in Africa, while denigrating the US and other rival powers—and this, too, has been a longer-term project. (I wrote about it in 2022, just as the country’s invasion of Ukraine was igniting a separate battle for global public opinion.) This was tied, in part, to the arrival of fighters from the mercenary Wagner group in countries including the Central African Republic and Mali; recently, Forbidden Stories, an international collaborative journalism organization, worked with partners to dig into whistleblower testimony provided by a journalist in the former country who helped apparent Wagner associates launder pro-Russian narratives into local news outlets. Since Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner’s leader, embarked on an abortive anti-Putin mutiny last year—and was later, erm, mysteriously killed—the propaganda efforts have continued, including under the banner of “African Initiative,” which emerged as a self-described news agency in the wake of Wagner’s collapse and has been linked to Russia’s intelligence services. Forbidden Stories and its partners found that it was running a “journalism school” in Mali. Over the weekend, the Post published an article based on access to African Initiative activities in Burkina Faso, and noted the existence of related pro-Russian news sites and even tours organized for African journalists in occupied Ukraine. Russia is “much better than the Europeans or Americans” at selling itself, one observer in Mali said. “The West funds 90 percent of development needs, but you never hear about that.”

At the same time, independent journalism has been repressed in countries including Mali and Burkina Faso—both of which, along with neighboring Niger, have been taken over by military juntas in recent years—and news organizations affiliated with Western countries and their governments have been among those that have found themselves in the crosshairs. When I wrote in 2022, Mali had just blocked France 24 and RFI, two public international broadcasters from France, accusing them of attempted destabilization. Since then, those same outlets have also been targeted in both Niger and Burkina Faso. Last year, the latter country variously expelled reporters from or suspended the local operations of several private French outlets; then, earlier this year, authorities suspended a number of foreign outlets—including the BBC and Voice of America—after they reported on alleged abuses by the country’s military. In October, Voice of America found itself suspended again.

The picture here, of course, is complex. Neutered press freedom is not a new phenomenon, in Africa or anywhere else; in countries like Burkina Faso and Mali, its recent retreat has been tied to the fight against militant and jihadist insurgencies. But the declines in those countries and others have also at least tracked intensifying hard-power pushes on the part of Russia—and accompanying military drawbacks on the part of Western powers, not least France, but also the US, which withdrew troops from Niger earlier this year—while leaving more space for pro-Russian narratives. The appeal of such narratives is also complex, as I noted in 2022; if African Initiative, for example, has sought to play on anti-colonial sentiment, that’s because it already had a deep organic history. But more narrowly pro-Russian talking points—about the war in Ukraine, for example—have gained purchase too. One recent study found strong support for two such narratives in several African countries—including Angola (even though respondents there had generally positive views of the US). Ahead of Biden’s visit this week, New York Times reporters also found some strong pro-China sentiment there.  

Western countries, including both France and the US, have themselves been accused of mounting informational influence campaigns overseas—but journalists and experts have stressed that the best viable way for the US and its allies to counter Russian and Chinese media and propaganda efforts, in Africa and elsewhere, is to export and support independent journalism. The US has done this, including under Biden, as I reported last year. (For example, Voice of America, while editorially independent, has long been seen as a tool of US soft power.) But, as Biden’s term comes to an end, it’s hard to conclude that he has made press freedom a top foreign policy priority. Nel, the analyst, told Voice of America that his visit to Angola risks being seen as a reward for a government that has taken an authoritarian turn in recent years—including via a new national security law that observers have warned will make it easier for those in power to surveil and otherwise harass journalists, and to shut down communications networks. Yesterday, Zenaida Machado, of Human Rights Watch, urged Biden to make his Africa trip count by publicly raising concerns “about police brutality and attacks on freedoms of expression, media, and association.”

It remains to be seen if Biden will do this. (I, for one, am not holding my breath.) But it’s not the purpose of his trip. And it certainly isn’t the Biden story everyone is talking about this week—that would be his declaration, on Sunday, that he would pardon his son Hunter of the firearm, drug, and tax charges against him, breaking promises not to do so. (When I tuned in to CNN yesterday, I heard a reporter being patched in from Luanda, the capital of Angola, to talk about Hunter.) In some quarters, Biden’s departure for his trip was seen almost as him running away from questions about the pardon. The pardon is rightly a big story. Once again, though, what a Biden was headed toward in Africa felt like an afterthought.  

Other notable stories:

• CJR’s Lauren Watson reports that independent Russian news organizations that were already struggling to reach audiences inside Russia amid a brutal media crackdown on the part of the Kremlin are also having to contend with Western sanctions that were intended to curb Russian propaganda but have ended up harming journalism, too; platforms like YouTube curbed Russian companies’ ability to make money, while payment service providers also enacted broad-based suspensions. “If you look at YouTube in Russia, it was mostly Russian opposition and independent media,” Tikhon Dzyadko, the editor of the independent TV Rain, said. “We need to get more and more viewers in Russia because that’s our mission. That’s why we exist. On the other hand, we get zero dollars from it—it’s a tough situation.” 

• Journalists are continuing to dig into Donald Trump’s picks for key positions in his administration. CNN reports that Karoline Leavitt, his choice for press secretary, posted tweets implicitly condemning the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021—but later deleted them, and ran for Congress in 2022 as “a staunch election denier.” Elsewhere, the Washington Post explored the conflict-of-interest questions arising from Mehmet Oz’s nomination to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, given that pharmaceutical interests have sponsored his eponymous TV show. And both the New York Times and The New Yorker have eyebrow-raising new stories about Pete Hegseth, the Fox host Trump has tapped for defense secretary. 

• In media-business news, the recently installed CEO of the Spanish-language media company TelevisaUnivision initiated a reorganization that will lead to layoffs; a source told the Hollywood Reporter that a “mid to high single digit percentage of employees” will be affected. ICYMI, the progressive outlet NowThis also recently made deep staff cuts, for the second time this year. And a trio of radio stations in Maine owned by the author Stephen King will shutter at the end of this year; the stations have reportedly been losing money for years, and King said that, at seventy-seven, it is time to “get his business affairs in better order.” The Bangor Daily News has more.

• For The Atlantic, the novelist and filmmaker Noah Hawley makes the case that journalists have a “what if? problem.” “When I consider the author’s role in our culture, I picture the following sequence: first comes news, then comes history, then comes fiction,” Hawley writes—but now he’s noticed that “fact and fiction are trading places in the sequence.” This in no small part has been down to the political right, but journalists are also getting sucked in, Hawley argues, not least by engaging in “dark speculation” about Trump’s plans for his second term when they should stick to facts.

• And shortly before Thanksgiving, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, pardoned nineteen people including Earlonne Woods, who founded the popular podcast Ear Hustle while incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison in 2017. (The show was later nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.) Woods had already been released from prison after former governor Jerry Brown commuted his sentence. Newsom previously commuted the sentence of Rahsaan Thomas, a cohost of Ear Hustle.

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Jon Allsop is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, among other outlets. He writes CJR’s newsletter The Media Today. Find him on Twitter @Jon_Allsop.