The role of cartoons in spreading disinformation in Africa
Animated videos that blend historical grievances with modern propaganda are being used in West Africa to increase anti-French sentiment, undermine Western peacekeeping efforts, and boost Russian influence in the region
Cartoons and animated videos have become powerful tools in shaping public opinion across parts of West Africa, where anti-French sentiment is on the rise. Pro-Russian actors strategically use these visual narratives to portray France as an occupying force while glorifying Russian-backed paramilitary groups like the Wagner Group and its successor, the Africa Corps. By blending historical grievances with modern propaganda tactics, these productions reinforce distrust in Western peacekeeping efforts and fuel support for Russian military influence in the Sahel and Central Africa.
In some countries in West Africa, France has now replaced jihadist groups as the ‘main enemy’, even though these groups were responsible for violent attacks and clashes for over a decade. This shift is reflected in the circulation of cartoons since at least 2019 that glorify paramilitary groups like the Wagner Group (and what is now regrouped as Africa Corps) and violently reject the French presence in the Sahel region — an embodiment of the latest pro-Russian propaganda on the African continent.
Using cartoons as one tool of effective propaganda has been well-known since the Nazis: bright and compelling colours, simple graphics, and simple but strong messages can make animated videos effective.
In July 2019, a Russian YouTube channel published a video glorifying the Russian presence in Africa, entitled ‘Lion Bear’ (‘Lion and Bear’). This nearly three-minute video clip devoted to the ‘cooperation between the Central African Republic (CAR) and Russia’ features a lion, denoting CAR, and a bear ‘from a distant country in the North called Russia’. A child’s voice tells the story of the lion who has come to defend an elephant, symbolising the Central African people, from an attack by hyenas trying to steal his harvest. The Russian bear rushes to rescue the elephant and ‘establish peace’ between the different animals of the savannah.
A pro-Russian Burkinabe Facebook page called ‘Burkina Kibaya’ published another video on 21 December 2022. This video went viral quickly and was picked up by many other accounts. It shows a rat, wearing a shirt with black and white stripes, holding a French flag, and entering the house of a man reading a newspaper. The rat eats his food, eventually growing larger and more vicious, and tells the man: ‘This is my house now. Get lost!’ As the rat eats the man’s food, a voice on the radio says in French: ‘This is the rat… He is your friend. He came to help you… You need him. Rats never steal. On the contrary, they do a lot of good… Colonialism is over.’
After this announcement, the man saw an ad in the paper for the Wagner PMC and made a phone call. After the call, a man in military uniform arrives and kills the rat with a sledgehammer with the letter ‘W’ on it. In the final scene, the two men sit together with two women roasting the rat, which symbolises France, over a campfire.
According to Emmanuel Dupuy, president of the Institute for Prospective and Security in Europe (IPSE) and lecturer in geopolitics at the Catholic University of Lille, who AFP interviewed in January 2023, both clips are promotional materials for the reconstituted Wagner Group. ‘The Wagner logo is very identifiable, we see Wagner’s hammer, […] and in the last segment, the Mi-17 helicopter drops a mercenary parachutist ’, he said to AFP.
The Wagner Group was founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2014, a close ally to Russian president Vladimir Putin. Prigozhin led the paramilitary group until August 2023 when he died in a plane crash in Western Russia, a few months after his attempted coup against Putin failed. The Russian mercenary group, highly active in Western Africa’s Sahel region, was put on the UK sanction list as a terrorist organisation. The Wagner Group used the CAR as a kind of laboratory to spread its propaganda and it was clear, according to a French military source interviewed by AFP in January 2023, that Russian trolls were behind these cartoons.
Despite the Wagner Group’s unsuccessful rebellion, Russia remains committed to the military-business model it developed to secure financial and political influence in Africa. This approach is now being advanced by the newly-formed Africa Corps, which is taking over Wagner’s operations in CAR, Libya, and Mali, while launching new efforts in Burkina Faso, Chad, and Niger. The transition from Wagner to Africa Corps has allowed Moscow to reassess Prigozhin’s network, aligning its activities with state objectives and determining which to sustain or discontinue.
Simultaneously, this military and political realignment is reinforced by a coordinated information campaign that frames Russia as Africa’s liberator against Western neo-colonialism.
One striking example is a widely shared cartoon that directly attacked French President Emmanuel Macron, first posted on X on 14 January 2023 by Souley 🇲🇱🦅(@Souleym25304454). It depicts Wagner PMC mercenaries fighting alongside African soldiers against French forces — symbolised as a cobra and an army of zombies — in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Ivory Coast. Such narratives not only amplify Moscow’s strategic messaging but also fuel anti-French sentiment, aligning with the Africa Corps’ expansion into regions with a history of colonial ties to France.
A few months before the Macron cartoon, that same account accused the French army of mass killings after the discovery of a mass grave in Gossi, a town in central Mali that is located near a base where French soldiers had just handed over to the Malian army as part of their gradual disengagement from the country. According to the official French statement, dumping bodies there was part of a smear campaign by the Russian mercenaries to blame France.
According to experts like Dupuy, the proliferation of these types of cultural productions clearly shows that Africa became the central location of the proxy war against Western interests in general and, in these specific cases, directly targeting France. While the Kremlin denied any official links to the Wagner Group, the French government took the threat of these disinformation narratives seriously and set up a unit at the French foreign ministry in 2022 that maps disinformation. According to diplomats and experts, ‘Russian propaganda has found fertile ground in Africa among grievances over France’s decades-old track record of military intervention.’
From Nazi-era cartoons lampooning the Allies to modern social media videos portraying rats and hyenas as stand-ins for Western powers, the historical playbook of simplified imagery and powerful symbolism remains highly effective. In today’s Sahel and Central Africa, cartoons are not merely entertainment but are employed as strategic tools of persuasion — reinforcing pro-Russian, anti-French sentiments and bolstering the influence of entities like the Wagner Group and its successor, the Africa Corps.
Cartoons remind us that false information can be hidden in fun, harmless-looking content (memes, shorts, reels, and TikTok videos), making it a powerful tool for modern propaganda.
This article was co-written by Nurudeen Akewushola, freelance journalist, working with the Pravda Association, and Jakub Śliż. The article was edited by senior editors Eva Vajda and Aleksandra Wrona and iLAB managing editor Janet Heard.