How deepfakes are reshaping African politics
AI-crafted hero myths mask failing military rule, leaving citizens ever less able to hold leaders to account.
Declining United States hegemony has given African nations new opportunities to benefit from renewed geopolitical competition, but major hurdles remain. Many countries continue to grapple with instability and corruption as the lines between state security forces and non-state armed groups blur. Living standards lag behind those of other regions, and civil unrest is rising.
Surveys routinely show that most Africans still prefer democracy over personalist autocracy, military regimes or single-party rule. But amid the battle for hearts and minds, Africa’s strongmen, as with those elsewhere, have a powerful new tool: deepfakes. These forgeries, generated by artificial intelligence (AI), increasingly underpin regimes’ efforts to inflate their popularity. The flood of synthetic content also aims to drown 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. 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 helps authoritarians shape public perception to their own ends. More such campaigns are likely, painting strongmen as the only leaders capable of delivering a better future – at the expense of national development.
Fakes vs reality
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 United States President Donald Trump. Crowds of his supporters supposedly dwarf the pope’s.
Africa’s strongmen, as with those elsewhere, have a powerful new tool: deepfakes
‘It’s algorithmic populism,’ a Burkinabè researcher told The Africa Report last year. ‘It’s about vibe and vision 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 the Economic Community of West African States has done lasting diplomatic damage. Political parties are now banned and the country’s independent electoral commission has been abolished. Hundreds of civil society organisations have been dissolved on vague grounds. ‘Democracy isn’t for us,’ Traoré told a state broadcaster in April 2026.
‘In a region with high mobile phone use 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 Rwanda’s government under President Paul Kagame.
This comes as Meta – owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – YouTube and Elon Musk’s X have all scaled back their content moderation teams. They now favour a crowdsourced approach to policing false information and manipulated material.
Information-integrity guidelines
A March 2025 resolution by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights called on its special rapporteur on freedom of expression and access to information to develop guidelines to uphold information integrity online. It also enlists African civil society groups, regulators and homegrown tech companies to monitor platforms’ performance collectively.
Since taking power in a 2022 coup, Traoré’s heavy-handed security strategy has failed
The initiative is worthy, but as technologies evolve, journalists, activists and institutions face an uphill battle to sift through the noise. Compared with 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 and greater foreign investment. And the world desperately needs Africa’s critical minerals to power emerging technologies – especially if runaway climate change is to be avoided. And as Africa is by far the world’s youngest region, its growth will be a major determinant of international security, global labour supply and migration for decades to come.
None of these challenges will be met if politicians sway elections with fake content, helping underperforming governments 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. This is especially true 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 centralised power, nationalising key portions of its mining sector, militarising the government and silencing criticism. This is despite ISS African Futures research showing that overcoming economic fragility requires integrated policy reforms to facilitate private-sector development and economic diversification. However, there are ways to push back.
Disinformation campaigns targeting African voters often display the same hallmarks across jurisdictions – a legacy of the Russian template pioneered by the Wagner Group mercenary outfit. Donor countries, especially Western ones, can help by providing funding and bespoke training for African journalists and researchers to enhance their ability to spot how African autocrats turn established tactics of foreign interference inward.
Visible, accountable governance elsewhere can offer voters a compelling alternative to strongman rule
Officials and policymakers elsewhere on the continent can also provide more support for implementing the African Commission’s resolution on online information integrity. Meanwhile, cultivating digital literacy is paramount to contain the virulence of fake content. Most social media posts feeding the myth-making around Traoré, for instance, come from outside Burkina Faso. Countries such as Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria are leaders in building national digital literacy programmes, offering a roadmap for other jurisdictions to adapt to their needs.
Structural solutions
African leaders must also draw more attention to the paradox of foreign-agent laws, particularly how their autocratic peers weaponise 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 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 the surest way to puncture authoritarian propaganda in the digital age is by example. Other African governments should model responsive governance that improves citizens’ security, basic services and economic opportunity – and communicate it creatively on the same platforms where strongmen pitch their false realities. Visible, accountable governance elsewhere can offer voters a compelling alternative to strongman rule.
This article was first published by Africa Tomorrow.
