# Africa Politology **Africa Politology** — "the Company" in its own internal documents — is the political-technology and influence branch [[Yevgeny Prigozhin]] built alongside the [[Wagner Group]]: the African counterpart to the [[Internet Research Agency]]. Created around 2018–2019, it hired political consultants, ran paid media and fake accounts, and was especially active before African elections. After Prigozhin's death it was taken over by the [[SVR]], Russia's foreign intelligence service, at the end of 2023 — the influence share of the Wagner estate, while the fighting share became [[Africa Corps]]. ## The February 2026 leak An anonymous source sent more than 1,400 pages of internal Russian-language documents, covering January to November 2024, to the editor of *The Continent*; a consortium including Forbidden Stories, All Eyes On Wagner, Dossier Center, openDemocracy and iStories authenticated 76 of them. The findings: | Finding | Detail | |---|---| | Control | SVR officers took charge at the end of 2023; the first meeting with SVR agents is dated December 15, 2023 | | Leadership | Sergey Mashkevich, a former Russian presidential-administration official who ran its [[Sudan]] project from 2019 | | Staff | Roughly 98 operatives by May 2024 (about 100 per Africanews) | | Budget | About $750,000 a month, January–October 2024 (sources total $7.2–7.5 million) | | Output | About $340,000 in August 2024 for 516 paid articles, posts and videos | | Reach | Campaigns or teams across Africa and Latin America — named countries include Angola, Bolivia, [[Burkina Faso]], Chad, Ghana, [[Libya]], [[Mali]], Niger, Senegal, Sudan, Namibia and Madagascar | Named operations include gathering intelligence on French and US plans in the Sahel, organizing a pro-junta rally in Mali in June 2024, a campaign against the French uranium company Orano in [[Niger]], a fabricated letter attributed to a British MP aimed at Namibia's election, and work in Bolivia after its June 2024 coup attempt. Operatives were arrested in Chad in 2024 and Angola in 2025. A related front, the Association for Free Research and International Cooperation (AFRIC), ran fake election-observer missions and profiled pan-African influencers; All Eyes on Wagner treats it as a separate entity with overlapping staff. > [!question] Unverified > All Eyes on Wagner says the US State Department sanctioned Africa Politology in January 2023; no official notice was found, and OCCRP reported it was not among the June 2023 designations. ## See Also - [[Wagner Group]] · [[SVR]] · [[Africa Corps]] · [[Internet Research Agency]] · [[Project Lakhta]] · [[Disinformation]] · [[Russian Influence]]