To explain its offensive in French-speaking Africa, the Russian channel claimed to have started from the observation that there is 300 million French speakers in the world, 60% of whom live in Africa.
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The South African satellite broadcaster Multichoice announced on Thursday March 3 the suspension of the broadcast of the Russian media RT (Russia Today) on its pan-African DStv service, following sanctions imposed by the European Union. “Russia Today (channel 407) will no longer be broadcast on the DStv platform until further notice”, announced a statement from Multichoice. “European Union sanctions on Russia have led the global distributor to cease delivery of satellite service to all providers,” explained the South African broadcaster. Africans who want to watch RT find a simple message on their screen explaining that “The channel you are trying to watch is not currently broadcast”. Multichoice’s DStv service is broadcast across sub-Saharan Africa and has some 20 million paying subscribers. Another South African platform, TelkomONE, has also suspended RT’s broadcast.
Russia Today began eyeing Africa at the end of 2018, with the aim of competing with France Médias Monde (FMM), notably France 24 and RFI. In North Africa, RT France is broadcast via Yahlive, a DTH joint venture launched by European SES and Emirati Al Yah Satellite communications. It is, to this day, still in the bouquet of Yahlive. “Behind France, the three countries in which we have the most Facebook subscribers (more than a million in total) are, in order, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. For the year 2018, I can tell you that almost 30% of the followers of our Facebook page were based in these three countries”, explained Xenia Fedorova, president and director of information of RT France, to Young Africa. To explain its offensive in French-speaking Africa, the channel started from the observation that there are 300 million French-speakers in the world, 60% of whom live in Africa.
On March 2, the EU banned the broadcasting of Russian media RT and Sputnik, considered to be instruments of “disinformation” of Moscow in its war against Ukraine. The social network Twitter has in turn blocked the accounts of Russian media RT and Sputnik in the European Union. It is now impossible to consult the various Twitter accounts of RT and Sputnik. When we try, the mention “Restricted Account” is displayed. Facebook and Instagram (Meta group) announced on February 28 that they were blocking content published by RT and Sputnik, followed by YouTube, in EU countries.