Deepfakes are helping Africa’s strongmen stay in power
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Artificial intelligence is enabling autocrats to spread self-serving illusions.
Declining US hegemony has gifted African nations new opportunities to benefit from renewed geopolitical competition. However, major hurdles stand in the way. Many countries continue to grapple with instability and corruption as the lines separating state security forces and armed non-state groups are evaporating. Improvements in basic living standards have lagged behind those in other regions as well. Civil unrest is on the rise.
Yet popular anger at inept governance does not equal a desire for dictatorship. Surveys routinely show a large majority of Africans still prefer democracy over authoritarian systems such as personalist autocracy, military regimes or single-party rule. But amid the battle for hearts and minds, Africa’s strongmen, like others elsewhere, have gained a powerful new tool: deepfakes. These AI-generated forgeries increasingly underpin regime attempts to inflate their popularity. The flood of synthetic content is also aimed at drowning out scrutiny.
‘These videos of military leaders, often dressed in ceremonial uniforms or surrounded by crowds, are made to look like moments of destiny,’ an African fact-checker told New Lines Magazine last year. ‘They speak directly to people’s frustration with democracy and decades of broken promises, and in places where schools are underfunded and traditional media has been silenced, that imagery becomes powerful, especially for the youth.’
This poses a new threat to African governance, as AI promises to help authoritarians better shape public perception for their own purposes. Going forward, expect more and more AI-driven campaigns painting strongmen leaders as the sole actor capable of delivering a better future for their people — sidelining national development in the process.
Burkina Faso’s military leader, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, is the prime example. Online, he is a modern-day Pan-Africanist hero. Hundreds of fake clips circulating on social media have him earning endorsements from A-list pop stars and US President Donald Trump. His crowds of supporters supposedly dwarf those of the Pope. ‘It’s algorithmic populism,’ a Burkinabe researcher told The Africa Report last year. ‘It’s about vibe and vision and not fact or policy. Social media platforms reward spectacle, and Traoré’s image fits perfectly into that ecosystem.’
In reality, the 38-year-old’s rule has been far bleaker.
Since taking power in a 2022 coup, Traoré’s heavy-handed security strategy has failed. The jihadist insurgency he promised to quell has intensified, while his military has been accused of massacring civilians. Burkina Faso’s exit from ECOWAS — the regional political and economic bloc — has done lasting diplomatic damage. Political parties are now banned, and the country’s independent electoral commission has been abolished. Hundreds of domestic civil society organisations have been dissolved under vague terms. ‘Democracy isn’t for us,’ Traoré told a state broadcaster this past April.
‘In a region with high mobile phone usage and low digital literacy, such misinformation doesn’t just go viral,’ wrote a journalist for Nigerian news outlet The Cable last year, ‘it rewrites public memory.’ Other early adopters of deepfakes and AI-powered propaganda in Africa include the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Sudan and the Rwandan government under Kagame.
And all of this is occurring as Meta — parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — along with YouTube and Elon Musk’s platform X, have each scaled back their content moderation teams in favour of a crowdsourced approach to police false information and manipulated material.
In response, a March 2025 resolution by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights calls on the African Union’s special rapporteur on freedom of expression and access to information to develop guidelines for upholding information integrity online. It also solicits the help of African civil society groups, regulators and homegrown tech companies to collectively monitor platforms’ performance.
It is a worthy initiative. However, as AI technologies continue to evolve, journalists, activists and institutions face an uphill battle to sift through the noise. Compared to human-driven troll farms, generative AI can deploy deepfakes much more cheaply, at greater velocity and on a vastly larger scale.
Compared to human-driven troll farms, generative AI can deploy deepfakes much more cheaply, at greater velocity and on a vastly larger scale
This proliferation of deepfake propaganda in Africa is both a regional and a global issue. The continent’s development goals will be impossible to achieve without new trade agreements coupled with a surge in foreign investment. And the world desperately needs Africa’s critical minerals to power emerging technologies — especially if runaway climate change is to be avoided. As by far the world’s youngest region, Africa’s growth will also be a major determinant of international security, global labour supply and migration for decades to come.
None of those challenges will benefit from politicians swaying elections with AI-generated content, enabling underperforming governments to cling to power. Ever more convincing digital propaganda will make it increasingly difficult for citizens and opposition groups to speak out against rulers who do not deliver on their promises, especially as tens of millions more African citizens will come online for the first time in the coming years.
Cloaking itself in AI-rendered caricatures of sovereignty, Traoré’s military government has aggressively centralised power, nationalising key portions of its mining sector, militarising government and silencing criticism. This, despite African Futures research indicating that the country’s path to overcoming economic fragility instead requires integrated policy reforms to facilitate private-sector development and economic diversification.
Yet there are ways to push back.
Disinformation campaigns targeting African voters often display the same hallmarks from one jurisdiction to another — a legacy of everyone borrowing from the same Russian template pioneered by the Wagner Group mercenary outfit. Donor countries, especially those in the West, can help by providing funding and bespoke training for African journalists and researchers to better spot how African autocrats are turning established tactics of foreign interference inward.
Officials and policymakers elsewhere on the continent can also provide more support for implementing the AU’s resolution on upholding online information activities. Meanwhile, cultivating digital literacy is paramount to containing the virulence of fake content. For instance, the highest number of social media posts perpetuating mythmaking around Ibrahim Traoré often come from outside of Burkina Faso. Countries such as Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria have taken the lead in building national digital literacy programmes. These offer a roadmap for other jurisdictions to adapt to their needs.
Cultivating digital literacy is paramount to containing the virulence of fake content
African leaders must also draw more attention to the paradox of anti-foreign agent laws. In particular, how their autocratic peers are weaponising them for anti-democratic purposes. Much of the attention on countering disinformation focuses on legal frameworks for mitigating cybercrime or foreign interference. But these can actually be ill-suited to address digital influence campaigns. Such laws tend to be malleable enough that bad actors can readily wield them against civil society by falsely conflating criticism of domestic policies with foreign attempts to destabilise the government.
Yet there is one ultimate way to puncture authoritarian propaganda in the digital age. That is for other nations to model responsive governance approaches that deliver tangible, steady improvements in security, basic services and economic opportunity for citizens — and then communicate them creatively on the same platforms where strongmen are pitching their false realities. Visible examples of accountable governance elsewhere can show how tangible development gains can be delivered. They can offer voters a compelling alternative to concentrating political power in a single party or leader at home.
Image: lizziechiquita/Pixabay
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