HOW WEST BUYS AFRICAN JOURNALISTS EXPOSED!

A leaked document titled the 'Adaptive Country Plan Research' - obtained by West Africa Weekly's @DavidHundeyin - reveals the extent of the on-going information war in Africa. In this clip, Hundeyin details how African journalists are used by NGOs to smear anti-imperialist individuals such as himself, as well as platforms like African Stream.

The document was assembled by the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR) and circulated to 10 Nigerian journalist who took part in a private retreat at the Kempinski Hotel in Accra, Ghana. In it, unfounded claims by former US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken - that African Stream is a Russian propaganda outfit - are regurgitated, citing sources that fail to produce any evidence.

To ‘demonstrate’ that we are doing the Kremlin’s bidding, the document points, for example, to a story we did on the 1995 Nigerian government’s execution of the ‘Ogoni 9’ - environmental activists who opposed the destruction of the Ogoni people and their lands by large conglomerates such as British oil-and-gas company Shell. The absurd logic here seems to be that highlighting Western-backed corporate crimes against Africans is now pro-Russian!

CIR, as Hundeyin mentions, is a London-based NGO founded by Adam Rutland and Ross Burley, who are both former employees of the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). It claims to be independent but is funded by the FCDO and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

USAID has recently come under scrutiny, following President Donald Trump's funding freeze. The organisation has been accused of being a tool of US foreign policy, dressed up as humanitarian efforts. On 4 February, the Columbia Journalism Review reported that over 6,000 journalists in some 30 countries were USAID funded.

Video credit: @DavidHundeyin (X)

Sources:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Hzyk4UorAxzUHKCBHZAWmnhx5O9gbr8v/view

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/usaid-and-the-media-in-a-time-of-monsters.php

https://www.info-res.org/