“Several signs indicate that Africa could be the next playing field for Russia’s information war”, a paper co-signed by the French ministry of foreign affairs and the Institute for Strategic Research at the Military School (IRSEM) indicates.

The paper warns of the “growing proportion of Russian contents within the Francophone African web space” via Sputnik and RT (Russia Today) notably. According to the authors of this paper, these websites take advantage of anti-western narratives’ popularity to gather a large audience in Côte d’Ivoire notably (among Laurent Gbagbo’s followers).

“Conspiracy theories and other sensational news Russian media are so fond of help them greatly increase their audience in the continent where such sensationalist media are popular”, the experts explain.

The paper also bemoans the fact that many African news websites republish in extenso the content of these websites “along with the news articles of large western media like AFP or Reuters”.

"In Senegal, many articles published on Sputnik about Africa are republished by Seneweb.com, the fourth most visited website in Senegal with more than 1.5 million Facebook followers", the experts who fear the fascination Putin's personality can have on part of the youth in Sub-Saharan Africa and in the Maghreb, lamented.