Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News – 11-11-2019
The Institute for Security Studies (ISS) says Africa is seen as a vulnerable continent when it comes to fake Facebook accounts impersonating mainstream media including trusted and influential individuals in an electorate.
Facebook has revealed that it had disabled hundreds of fake accounts that had sought to meddle with the electoral processes of eight African countries.
It was found that a network of Russian accounts used fake or compromised user accounts to tamper with domestic electoral processes in Madagascar, Sudan, Libya, the Central African Republic, Mozambique, the DRC, Ivory Coast and Cameroon.
Speaking to Radio Islam, senior research adviser, emergency threats in Africa, Karen Allen says Africa is seen as vulnerable because it is easy to penetrate influential networks.
“There’s such a high circulation of pirated software which means you can’t take the updates to be able to protect yourself from various types of incursions. But what this appears to be was a very concerted and systematic campaign of disinformation and we are seeing this across the world, Africa is definitely not alone.”
Allen says evidence of the concerted digital disinformation campaigns linked to Russia emerged from Facebook’s joint investigation with Stanford University’s Internet Observatory.
“What’s significant is that these accounts are linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, he’s also known as Putin’s chef. He’s very, very close to the Russian leader and it’s a series of networks linked to him and his operation which seems to be the common factor here.”
In 2021 nearly a dozen prominent election campaigns will be fought across Africa.
Listen to the interview with Karen Allen
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