Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.

The highlights this week: Benin’s failed coup highlights a network of pro-Russian actors across the continent, the dispute over Zambia’s fraught election continues, and the Tanzanian government suspends an independent newspaper.

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.

The highlights this week: Benin’s failed coup highlights a network of pro-Russian actors across the continent, the dispute over Zambia’s fraught election continues, and the Tanzanian government suspends an independent newspaper.

Africa Brief will take a break for the next two weeks. Our regular programming will return on Wednesday, Sept. 16.

Moscow’s Expanding Network

A coup thwarted in Benin last year has highlighted a network of pro-Russian actors in Africa, according to new details that have emerged from an ongoing extradition trial in South Africa.

The December mutiny, which was led by Lt. Col. Pascal Tigri and included the temporary seizure of the national broadcaster, collapsed within hours following military intervention from neighboring Nigeria. However, subsequent legal proceedings have shed light on how local pro-Russian influencers and movements work to achieve shared aims across African borders.

In its bid to prosecute those involved in the failed coup, Benin filed extradition requests for individuals in a number of African countries. This included Tigri, who fled to Togo—though his exact whereabouts remain unknown—and pro-Russian social media influencer Kemi Seba, who escaped to South Africa.

In April, South African police arrested Seba (whose real name is Stellio Gilles Robert Capo Chichi), who is wanted by Benin for “inciting” the coup. South African prosecutors allege that Russia funded and orchestrated an illegal escape plan for the 45-year-old Seba.

According to South African police, Seba was arrested with more than $18,000. Pretoria’s intelligence has suggested that the cash originated from Russia and was to be paid to Francois van der Merwe, a leader within the Afrikaner white nationalist group Bittereinders, to facilitate cross-border transport of Seba and his 18-year-old son from South Africa into Zimbabwe and on to Europe to carry out terror attacks, according to court documents revealed earlier this month. Seba and his legal team reject the accusations.

All three individuals—Seba, his son, and Merwe—were arrested together. Merwe had previously attended a September gathering of neofascists in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Despite growing up in France, Seba, who has about 1.5 million Facebook followers, has been a highly vocal critic of French neocolonialism in Francophone Africa on social media. He was stripped of his French nationality in July 2024 after he had........

© Foreign Policy