African Stream: Russia’s Latest Covert Influence Pipeline Targeting Africa and the U.S.
African Stream: Russia’s Latest Covert Influence Pipeline Targeting Africa and the U.S.
On September 13, 2024 U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken gave a press briefing about efforts to counter covert Russian government influence operations. He stated that RT, the Russian state media outlet previously called Russia Today, engages in “covert information and influence operations and military procurement." Blinken mentioned several operations, including one targeting Moldova, another based in Germany, and one called African Stream. RT, he said, “secretly runs the online platform African Stream across a wide range of social media platforms. Now, according to the outlet’s website, 'African Stream is’ – and I quote – 'a pan-African digital media organization based exclusively on social-media platforms, focused on giving a voice to all Africans both at home and abroad.’”
African Stream shares several characteristics with past covert Russian social media influence operations. First, it seems to have been outsourced to an individual with regional expertise – in this case, a Sudanese-British journalist with state-sponsored media experience, skilled in promoting anti-Western narratives and knowledgeable about African politics. Similarly, earlier operations linked to the late Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian businessman connected to Russian President Vladimir Putin, were also outsourced to local figures with media backgrounds, including in Sudan and Libya. Second, African Stream frequently reposts authentic content that has already demonstrated its potential to gain traction, a tactic employed by the Internet Research Agency as early as 2014. Third, the broad narratives about Africa and the U.S. mirror those from previous influence operations. What sets African Stream apart is its higher reach and video-first approach, along with the extent to which staff have state media experience: the CEO along with at least five of the reporters we identified all had extensive experience working for state media outlets.
African Stream portrays itself as an independent media outlet. According to the State Department, the URL africanstream.media is linked to the brand, and African Stream’s Linktree suggests the outlet also maintains accounts on TikTok (918,000 followers), Instagram (839,000 followers, now down), YouTube (460,000 subscribers, now down), Threads (113,000 followers, now down), Facebook (99,000 followers, now down), X (68,000 followers), Telegram (4,029 subscribers), LinkedIn (366 followers), Rumble (219 followers), Reddit, PayPal, and Patreon. We did not assess the extent to which these followers were real people. Most accounts began posting prolifically in March 2023, though the CEO’s LinkedIn profile says he began working with African Stream in February 2022, the YouTube channel was created in June 2022, and the Facebook Page was created in August 2022.
Leadership and Structure
In 2023 the African Stream Reddit account said that its CEO was Ahmed Kaballo. Responding to questions from Redditors about who funded the outlet, the account claimed it did not receive state funding. It noted that though the CEO had previous links to Iranian state media, that was no longer the case, as evidence by the fact that “our female presenters are free to dress how they like”:
This is the CEO now talking, Ahmed Kaballo, we receive our funding from donors that believe in our cause, but to be honest, it is not enough and one of the big donors recently pulled out because of our coverage over the Niger crisis. Most of our staff work voluntarily and believe in our cause, but we are launching a fundraiser next week to pay all of our staff and do some actual in-the-field reporting.
We don't receive funding from any state, nor would we accept funding from any form. Yes, I, Ahmed Kaballo, the CEO, used to work for Press TV, an Iranian-funded channel, but I don't work for them anymore, and they have absolutely nothing to do with African Stream; this should be obvious in the content we produce. We discuss African spirituality and include stories about different Gods, which the Islamic Republic of Iran would never sponsor, let alone fund.
Furthermore, our female presenters are free to dress how they like again, something that the Islamic Republic of Iran would never fund. I hope you will take our answers with the sincerity they were written because I think we are all trying to achieve the same thing.
We are based in Kenya, and if anyone wants to visit us in our office, they are more than welcome to. We need as much help as possible, so if anyone wants to come to the office and help us with content, please get in touch.
On LinkedIn Kaballo identifies as both the CEO and founder of African Stream. His profile states that he worked with Press TV (Iranian state media) for seven years in London, and that prior to that he worked for three years with former UK MP George Galloway. Kaballo says he is British-Sudanese, received a bachelors and master’s degree in the UK, and as of 2024 lives in Kenya. In an interview he said he started African Stream due to frustration that the media (even the “anti-imperialist media” he previously worked for) was uninterested in stories about Africa. A cached version of his bio, as seen on kagi.com, said that he had served as a political analyst for RT. He appeared to continue to do work for Press TV after starting African Stream; he was involved with a Press TV documentary in July 2023.
African Stream’s LinkedIn account claims: “We work with Africans on the ground in different African countries and the diaspora to co-create stories that need to be told from an pan-African perspective.“ However, its social media accounts frequently repost videos from other users, merely adding the African Stream logo, brief text about the presenter (e.g. “Indigenous content creator,” or “U.S. President”), and minimal editing. It is doubtful that most of these individuals were involved in an editorial decision to repost their content.
In other cases African Stream created original content with individuals described as “African Stream journalists,” indicating firsthand content creation. One of these individuals said she was from the Bay Area and lives in Burkina Faso. Others who identify as direct African Stream employees include one who appears to be from Zambia and previously worked with teleSUR, a media outlet funded in part by the Venezuelan government. A third appears to be from Nigeria and worked with African Stream while also working as a freelance reporter with RT, TRT (Turkish state media), and Radio France Internationale. (We confirmed that she published with Radio France Internationale at the same time that her LinkedIn profile says she worked with African Stream.) A fourth lives in Chicago and currently works for CGTN (Chinese state media) while working for African Stream. He also has experience with TRT, and runs a digital media company. A fifth lives in Washington DC and worked for more than two years with RT. A sixth lives in Kenya and previously worked for CGTN. It is unclear if these individuals knew of African Stream’s Russian links.
Narratives
African Stream claims to focus on African issues, but it often pushed pro-Russian and anti-American/Western narratives with only very weak connections to Africa. On Reddit, the African Stream account commented in subreddits like r/BlackLivesMatter and r/BlackWomenDivest, which are both U.S. centric.
A September 2024 TikTok video (1,147 likes), for example, criticized U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’ record as a prosecutor, with the only connection to Africa being the mention of her "Afro-Jamaican" heritage. An Instagram post about the U.S. presidential elections made the connection to Africa with: “Yet, African revolutionaries have long denounced both parties as two sides of the same coin.” A reposted video on Instagram (18,300 likes) showed a black woman describing her treatment at an Israeli checkpoint. The closest connection to Africa in the video is that the account calls the woman a “black activist.”
Similarly, the accounts attempted to frame African issues as being linked to the West, sometimes in ways that were difficult to grasp. A TikTok post about flooding in Libya in 2024 (202 likes) claimed U.S. military intervention in Libya in 2011 prevented former head of Libya Muammar Gaddafi from investing in infrastructure that would have prevented the flooding.
Common narratives, as identified by the most frequently appearing words and word pairs in captions across the 4,634 Instagram posts, include: South Africa (e.g. criticism of apartheid), Israel (criticism of Israel), Black (e.g. criticism of racism in the U.S.), France (e.g. criticism of French involvement in West Africa, particularly Niger, which was also discussed frequently), Kenya (e.g. praise of Russian-Kenyan relations), and police (e.g. police brutality in the U.S.). “Trump” appeared 87 times, “Kamala” appeared 36 times, and “Biden” appeared 98 times. References to all three individuals were generally critical, discussing recent claims by former U.S. President Donald Trump about immigrants eating pets, Harris’ supposed anti-Black record as a prosecutor, and U.S. President Joe Biden’s age. Other notable but less frequent topics included criticism of Elon Musk, criticism of Ukraine, and criticism of Western involvement in Venezuela.
Prior to Blinken’s announcement, many have been suspicious of African Stream. In addition to the suspicious Redditors noted above, African Stream itself posted that both NBC and VOA had reached out with allegations that the outlet was posting misinformation.
Reach
African Stream accounts had varied levels of engagement: some videos received hundreds of thousands of reactions while others received merely dozens. The outlet made some efforts to expand their reach, with individuals linked to African Stream appearing on Russian state media and Turkish state media, and participating in George Galloway shows, all during their African Stream employment. The CEO also published occasionally in Daily Nation, a Kenyan media outlet.
In 2023 CNBC interviewed Kaballo for 10 minutes about the “success” of African Stream and rising business opportunities for streamers in Africa. “I started off with a dream,” Kaballo claimed, “and I went to investors with that dream.”
Do African Stream Employees Know Who Pays the Bills?
The key question in these types of operations is whether the local actors were aware of who was funding them and directing their content. In the case of African Stream we have no insight into this question. However, CNN reporting on a 2020 Prigozhin-linked influence operation, which was outsourced to a fake NGO in Ghana, revealed that the head of the NGO – a Ghanaian living in Russia – likely understood the nature of the operation. The more junior staff may not have known a politically connected Russian businessman was directing their content, though they were likely suspicious about the fact that they were employed by an NGO but spent their days tweeting inflammatory content from accounts purporting to belong to Americans. Similarly, earlier this year the Justice Department alleged that RT financed an American media entity called Tenet Media. They paid Tenet Media to partner with on-air talent and push particular narratives. In this case an inner circle had a sense for where the funding came from, while the talent appeared to be unwitting.
On September 17, 2024, following their suspension on YouTube and Meta platforms, African Stream posted a video on TikTok claiming that the allegations of links to Russia were false and that they are “consulting our legal team to figure out how best to move forward.” The caption encourages viewers to follow African Stream on Patreon, Telegram, and Rumble.
