U.K FOREIGN OFFICE TARGETS AFRICAN STREAM

A trove of confidential documents, e-mails and WhatsApp conversations has unveiled a ploy by the British Foreign Office to run a smear campaign against African Stream.

The Centre for Information Resilience (CIR) is at the centre of the scheme, the latest by Western governments opposed to our independent and African-centred reporting.

According to the documents, CIR is paying African journalists to write articles claiming that African Stream is a Russian-funded propaganda outlet - a claim not backed by any evidence other than similar accusations by the US government.

However, as African Stream’s editor-in-chief, Ahmed Kaballo, explains in this video, plenty of evidence indicates that CIR is firmly connected to the British government and other Western intelligence establishments. The outfit, masquerading as an ‘independent counter-disinformation’ organisation, has not only received significant amounts of funding from the UK Foreign Office, USAID and the Australian Foreign Ministry, but most of its senior staff have worked with the aforementioned governments’ intelligence wings, including its two directors Ross Burley and Adam Rutland, who are ‘former’ Foreign Office employees.

Knowing who funds the CIR makes it clear why they are coming after us and accusing us of being Russia-affiliated. Our reporting, which exposes the atrocities committed by the imperialist powers against our people, has rubbed them the wrong way.

This attack is not the first; we know it won’t be the last. But when the next one comes, it will also find us on our feet, not our knees. No number of assaults by imperialism’s attack dogs will deter us from our duties as pan-African, anti-imperialist journalists.