Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso – October 5, 2025: The Alliance of Sahel States has taken its most decisive step yet toward media sovereignty, with state news agencies from Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso signing a historic cooperation agreement aimed at countering what they term “external disinformation campaigns” targeting their confederation. The memorandum, signed during the 14th African University on Communication Conference in Ouagadougou on October 2, represents a coordinated effort to reshape the information landscape across the Sahel region.
The agreement between Burkina Faso’s AIB, Mali’s AMAP, and Niger’s ANP establishes formal mechanisms for producing and disseminating what the alliance calls “reliable information free from external influence”. Speaking at the signing ceremony, Burkina Faso’s Minister of Communication Pindwende Gilbert Ouedraogo declared the initiative a direct response to systematic disinformation: “We are combining our efforts to counter disinformation, to reaffirm our own perception of the realities of our peoples and to offer the world an authentic view of our societies”.
This media alliance emerges as part of a broader information war playing out across West Africa, where the AES faces what research describes as an “existential threat” from coordinated digital campaigns designed to undermine their legitimacy. The timing coincides with the AES’s increasing isolation from Western institutions and growing alignment with Russia, which has provided both military support and sophisticated information warfare capabilities to the military governments.
Digital Battlefield Reshapes African Information Space
The AES’s media consolidation strategy represents a defensive response to what analysts describe as an unprecedented surge in foreign-sponsored disinformation campaigns targeting the region. According to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, West Africa now accounts for 40% of all identified disinformation campaigns on the continent, with Russia linked to approximately half of these operations. Between 2020 and 2023, Russian media engagement in Mali surged by 703%, in Burkina Faso by 940%, and in Niger by 947%.
This digital warfare has proven remarkably effective in reshaping public opinion across the Sahel. Gallup polling data reveals a dramatic shift in leadership approval ratings, with support for Russian leadership jumping from 64% to 89% in Mali and from 55% to 81% in Burkina Faso between 2019 and 2023. Simultaneously, approval for French leadership collapsed from around 50% to less than 20% in both countries.
The sophistication of these information operations extends far beyond traditional propaganda. Research documents reveal a coordinated network of over 1,500 unique accounts amplifying identical content across X, Telegram, and YouTube, generating more than 3.7 million confirmed exposures within a single month. These campaigns strategically exploit anti-colonial sentiment and pan-Africanist narratives to frame military coups as “popular uprisings” while portraying democratic institutions as Western impositions.
The AES governments have embraced this narrative shift, with their information strategy explicitly targeting what they characterize as French and Western media manipulation. In a September 2025 address to the United Nations, Burkina Faso’s representative accused France’s “public media” of becoming “a mouthpiece for the communication of these criminals” referring to terrorist groups operating in the region. This rhetoric aligns with broader AES accusations that France actively supports destabilizing forces across the Sahel.
Geopolitical Stakes of Information Sovereignty
The establishment of this joint media platform represents more than defensive messaging—it signals the AES’s commitment to constructing an alternative information ecosystem that challenges Western narrative dominance. The confederation has already launched concrete steps toward media independence, including plans for a joint AES Web TV and radio station, validated in December 2024 during a communication ministers’ workshop in Bamako. These initiatives aim to “reassure populations, raise awareness in the international community and reveal media untruths aimed at destabilizing our confederation,” according to Mali’s Minister of Communications.
The broader context reveals how information warfare has become central to the AES’s sovereignty project. The alliance has systematically expelled Western media outlets, with Mali and Burkina Faso banning Radio France Internationale and France 24 following Russian-amplified calls for boycotts. This media crackdown coincides with the AES’s withdrawal from multiple Western-aligned institutions, including their September 2025 exit from the International Criminal Court and March 2025 departure from the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie.
The information strategy extends beyond traditional media control to encompass broader cultural and linguistic sovereignty. The AES has downgraded French as an official language while promoting indigenous languages and pan-African narratives. This cultural dimension reinforces the confederation’s positioning as a resistance movement against what it characterizes as neocolonial information control.
Western responses to this information warfare have proven largely ineffective, with European leaders struggling to counter what research describes as “algorithmic tactics to amplify falsehoods and distort information ecosystems”. The European Centre for Foreign Relations acknowledges the urgent need for “credible local media and targeted messaging” to counter authoritarian narratives, but implementation remains limited.
The AES’s media alliance ultimately represents a sophisticated attempt to weaponize information sovereignty as a tool of geopolitical realignment. By constructing alternative information infrastructures, the confederation aims to insulate its populations from external narrative influence while projecting its own vision of pan-African liberation. This strategy positions the military governments not as isolated juntas, but as pioneers of a new model of African media independence that challenges Western information hegemony across the continent. As former Malian Communication Minister Gaoussou Drabo stated in July 2024, cooperation with Russia remains essential “to counter fake information spread by countries that had lost influence in West Africa”.
