Burkina Faso: Ibrahim Traoré glorified by Beyoncé and R. Kelly thanks to AI

According to viral videos circulating on the internet, the American singer imprisoned R. Kelly, Beyoncé and Pope Leon XIV agreed on one point: the head of the Burkina Faso junta, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, is a fantastic leader.

These diverted images are the bridgehead of a disinformation campaign carried out for several weeks by the Burkinabè junta to heroïser her leader, far from the jihadist violence that mourns his country and the repression of discordant voices. Combining propaganda and content generated by artificial intelligence (AI), they have intensified since April and have been particularly relayed in English -speaking countries in West Africa. One of the videos, viewed more than two million times since May, shows the American singer R. Kelly, currently imprisoned for sex traffic in North Carolina, singing from her prison, in the piano and tears in the eyes, an ode in English to Captain Traoré. He celebrates a “standing” man who “risked everything” and “fights for peace in his native land”, between two images of synthesis of the Burkinabè leader leading his troops in combat.

In another song in English, seen almost 100,000 times since May, the American star Beyoncé is crying in a church, on a beach or in a forest in flames, calling to protect Captain Traoré, “La Voix des Étales” and “the captain of our vessel”.

Pope Leo XIV is also used: diverted images show him responding to an alleged letter from Captain Traoré, where he says he “heard the cry of a continent injured by abandonment and exploitation”.

“These campaigns of influence and disinformation aim to extend the worship of the personality around the Captain Traoré to the English -speaking neighbors of Burkina Faso,” an American researcher told AFP on condition of anonymity. And to divert the attention of the inability of the leader of the junta, to keep her commitment, made by taking power by a coup in September 2022, to regain control of the country in six months against the jihadists affiliated with Al-Qaida and the Islamic State.

The attacks have since multiplied, killing thousands of deaths, with a peak between March and April, a period also marked by the arrest of officers accused of an attempted putsch. Little time before the launch of the campaign to the glory of Captain Traoré. At the same time, disinformation campaigns appeared in several African English-speaking countries after the American general Michael Langley, then head of the United States command for Africa (Africom), accused the junta of diverting mining resources to finance her security. Remarks denounced by the Burkinabè authorities, but also by their neighbors and allies of Niger and Mali.

Activists and English-speaking influencers, in Africa and even in the United States, have relayed disinformation, especially to denounce Langley and Magnify Traoré. “Information manipulation has become a lever for conservation of power and legitimization of the presence of the junta”, analyzes a Burkinabè specialist in informational influence, who prefers to keep anonymity for security reasons. If “some influencers were self-proponent of this campaign to make it a business, others have been contacted by the junta’s informational influence system,” he added.

According to him, the junta has a group of cybermilitants who “work as a digital army” with “at their head the activist Ibrahima Maïga, installed in the United States”. “They relay a narrative anti-imperialist, which presents the Captain Traoré as the one who will save Burkina and Africa from the neocolonialism of the West,” he adds. And their narrative “arranges Russia, which in turn amplifies it”.

“Some reports have established Russian connections in the recent thrust of these disinformation operations,” observes the American researcher, adding that the pro -Traores campaign targets Ghana and particularly Nigeria, a giant whose destabilization “would have significant effects on the region”. “The media in Burkina and Togo have accepted money from Russia to relay these campaigns,” said Nigerian journalist Philip Obaji, a specialist in Russian influence operations.