In the Spotlight | Burkina Faso, the World's Disinformation Lab

Burkina Faso offers a terrifying glimpse into a world hurtling into the future while still stuck in the past.

Burkina Faso‘s military leader Ibrahim Traore is welcomed by Commandant of the Moscow Kremlin Sergei Udovenko upon arrival for a meeting with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Russia, May 10, 2025. (REUTERS/Anton Vaganov/Pool)

Burkina Faso is many things. The country is considered to be the epicenter of global terrorism today. It is ranked number one on the Global Terrorism Index Scale (2024), marking the first time in the thirteen years since the database’s inception that Iraq or Afghanistan have not topped the index. The country has been rocked by jihadist attacks on major towns like Djibo, with jihadists using drones and anti-aircraft guns to fight off government forces.

However, the regime’s propaganda forces paint Burkina Faso in a very different light. All appears well in the digitally-constructed alternate reality of President Ibrahim Traoré. In deepfake videos seen by millions worldwide, the country’s president is beloved by international stars such as Justin Bieber and Beyonce. Never mind that these stars have likely never heard of Burkina Faso, nor know anything about the country’s junta president. Traoré’s alternate reality represents an unsettling new world, one in which government-dominated social media attempts to balance the reality of societal collapse.

Traoré sees himself, or at least portrays himself publicly, as a visionary leader walking in the footsteps of Africa’s post-colonial generation. He pitches himself as an anti-Western, pro-Russian, pan-Africanist leader in the style of Thomas Sankara. Like junta leaders in neighboring Mali and Niger, Traoré is countering the Western-backed failure of democratic governance in Africa. While his approach reflects legitimate grievances with France, the United States, and others, the consequences of Traoré’s style of disinformation will have long-term effects on the political health of the Sahel, if not Africa more generally.

While the Sahelian country’s neighbors have experienced similar disinformation campaigns and problematic responses to governance failures, Burkina Faso is a particularly problematic case given the scope of violence, loss of state control, and the sheer level of disinformation emanating from state sources.

Why is Burkina Faso unique? Mali and Niger have experienced their own spikes in disinformation while also dealing with jihadism, but both countries maintain some level of domestic non-jihadist opposition, including ethnic Tuareg coalitions in Mali (Strategic Framework for the Defense of the People of Azawad and Niger (Patriotic Liberation Front). Both of these coalitions provide frequent online responses to state-based disinformation campaigns. Burkina Faso is a more extreme case relative to both of these countries, although Niger and Mali could certainly slide into the same grouping as Burkina Faso in the future. Elsewhere, Sudan does not have a developed information space to create the conditions that exist in Burkina Faso—literacy rates are particularly low and internet availability, already limited before the war, has been further degraded during the civil war. Lastly, the Central African Republic, while the site of a heavy-handed, Russian-backed disinformation campaign in the early 2020s, maintains both independent news organizations, such as Corbeau News, along with many opposition groups. Indeed, popular anger at the Wagner Group’s atrocities against civilians fomented into an anti-Wagner protest attended by thousands in Bangui on April 4, 2025. Today, Burkina Faso maintains little to no civil society or media opposition, which is unsurprising given recent heavy government repression and the country’s poor educational track record.

While echo chambers exist across the world, they are rarely so heavily enforced by a state government and fostered by an education system that does not prioritize critical thinking.

Burkina Faso offers a terrifying glimpse into a world hurtling into the future while still stuck in the past. The government is struggling to deliver basic services, particularly education. The country’s literacy rate sits at 34.9 percent as of 2022, nearly half the sub-Saharan regional average of 67.7 percent. Both the quality of education and the number of students enrolled in primary and secondary schools are low. This lack of education is problematic on its own, but when combined with the junta government’s approach to propaganda and controlling the flow of information, it is particularly problematic. While echo chambers exist across the world, they are rarely so heavily enforced by a state government and fostered by an education system that does not prioritize critical thinking.

In Burkina Faso, this has created a laboratory-like setting for testing disinformation techniques. Advances in technology play a crucial role in this process, particularly the use of artificial intelligence techniques like deepfakes, which mimic the voice and facial expressions of real people. This technique provides the facade of popular, even Western, support for Traoré’s actions. While occasionally this support is real, particularly in the case of former UK Member of Parliament George Galloway, such political views are very much on the fringe of Western society—Bieber and Beyonce likely could not find Burkina Faso on a map, let alone understand its political situation nor connect with its president. Beyond the West, Traoré has attempted to clean his own slate, ripping footage of low-cost housing being built in Algeria and claiming credit for such projects in Burkina Faso. This is a clear attempt at whitewashing his more nefarious activities. The junta’s ultra-violent Volunteers for Defense of the Homeland campaign highlights these activities, where his attempt to arm civilians to fight against jihadists have led to a slew of attacks on civilians, particularly Muslim minorities. This approach has fueled further ethnic conflict and encouraged a new cycle of jihadist recruitment, perpetuating civilian misery in the country.

While anti-French and anti-Western disinformation campaigns reflected real resentment and grievances against neocolonial and parochial relationships, authoritarian actors have fanned the flames of resentment through their disinformation activities. In Burkina Faso, such activities pre-dated the coup that brought Traoré to power, with Russian influence campaigns aimed to foster anti-French, anti-colonialist sentiment. Between Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali, Russia conducted nineteen distinct disinformation campaigns as of March 2024, although the number has likely increased since. Chinese disinformation campaigns have also targeted countries across the continent, although they have tended to focus on littoral West Africa, southern Africa, and a few other countries including Chad, Mali, and Djibouti. Such disinformation campaigns have helped unseat Western military assistance and diplomatic missions in the Sahel, while also covering up for the widespread atrocities committed by Wagner Group and the recently established Africa Corps.

While these coordinated campaigns have allowed Russia and China to build their influence in the Sahel at the expense of the West, they are contributing to cycles of violence between ethnic groups and levels of instability with long-term historical consequences.

While these coordinated campaigns have allowed Russia and China to build their influence in the Sahel at the expense of the West, they are contributing to cycles of violence between ethnic groups and levels of instability with long-term historical consequences. These hard-nosed counterterrorism operations allow jihadist groups to spread and thrive, giving these groups fodder for recruitment among civilians abused by junta governments and allowing this blight to expand to neighboring countries. Indeed, Burkina Faso is becoming a hub for jihadist operations abroad, including into Togo and Benin. Encouraging junta rule establishes a path to nowhere for Sahelian populations, as atrocities against civilians continue, juntas are inevitably overthrown, and the blight of jihadism is allowed to expand unchecked.

The Traoré regime’s approach to counterterrorism fuels local ethnic conflict and its propaganda arm actively pursues anti-democratic thought, together preventing a healthy society from emerging. Yet, these issues did not form overnight. Burkina Faso’s quagmire reflects a lack of options and frustration towards a corrupt status quo.

Western disengagement, or perhaps the “ghosts of engagement,” continue to inflame local protest movements and provide fodder for junta regimes and foreign bad actors across francophone West and Central Africa. While these regimes and their Russian and Chinese co-conspirators may take much of the blame for creating the conditions that have allowed such disinformation echo chambers to proliferate, the West—including France, the United States, and the United Kingdom—has contributed to these problems as well. While France and the United Kingdom’s colonial history and American Cold War interventionism are doubtlessly important, the West’s inability to construct a successful counterterrorism mission in the Sahel is the primary irritant for Sahelians.

In particular, the dialogue around Western failures in this region reflects strategic myopia on the part of French, American, and other European militaries. While unrealistic Operation Serval, a limited, French-led approach to pushing back jihadist forces cascading into Mali and its neighbors from North Africa was successful, its follow-up, Operation Barkhane, lacked the same type of limited objectives. The latter operation, a nearly a decade-long beginning in 2014, aimed to defeat terrorism in the Sahel, an impossibly vague mission. This operation established a long-term Western presence in the Sahel, reviving the ghost of Western engagement, while proving frustratingly unsuccessful in accomplishing its goals. Sahelian militaries in particular felt resentful, as Western forces were unwilling to target civilians, especially Muslim herders, allegedly cooperating with jihadist forces. Without clear objectives and with growing local opposition, local resentment festered, further fueled by the West’s other ghost of engagement: West and Central Africa’s neo-colonial banking system.

“Perhaps everything we’ve done has surprised you, hasn’t it? More changes might still surprise you. And it’s not just about currency. We will break all ties that keep us in slavery,” Traoré claimed in an interview in February 2024. Traoré’s claim reflects a growing frustration with France’s continued economic role in Africa, a result of the enduring Central and West African franc currency systems that continue to exist in twelve former French colonies in the region. This currency regime, which during decolonization aimed to provide a smooth landing for African economies by pegging their currencies to the stability of the French franc, has endured through the transition to the euro until today. Yet, perhaps the most humiliating aspect of this system is that 50 percent of each member state’s foreign assets are held in Paris, plus an additional 20 percent for “sight liabilities.” While the junta regimes of the Sahel continue to posture about breaking from the French economic system they have been dogged by a lack of alternatives and internal financial difficulties. These two ghosts of a colonial past are the target of much West and Central African ire and explain Burkina Faso’s animus towards France and the West in general.

By failing to foster post-colonial economic relations that would have allowed infrastructure and public investment to grow organically in Burkina Faso, France is continually accused of stealing resources from the country while providing little of value in exchange. Additionally, Western (and Australian) companies continue owning significant mining/resource extraction sites across the Sahel, inflaming anti-Western sentiment among local populations and providing an obvious scapegoat for junta leaders. Simply withdrawing military forces from the country has not resolved sentiments of unequal exchange, both because of France’s continued economic role in the region and because authoritarian counterterrorism approaches are failing in the face of mounting jihadism.

Burkina Faso is experiencing a fatal cycle of anti-Western sentiment, authoritarian revanchism, and militant sectarianism. While Traoré clings to power in Ouagadougou, making full use of disinformation techniques supported by Russia and China, the country is sliding toward failed statehood—if it isn’t there already. Stemming the tide of jihadism and rebuilding state infrastructure and capacity to govern should be an American priority, if not for the welfare of the average Burkinabe citizen than for the self-interested desire to deter jihadist statelets from approaching the Atlantic—far closer to American shores than they ever were in Syria or Iraq.

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Raphael Parens is a Fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute's Eurasia Program. He is an international security researcher focused on Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and specializes in small armed groups and NATO modernization processes.