African Stream, a Nairobi-based digital media platform that challenged Western narratives on African geopolitics and imperialism, will shut down in July — citing a coordinated campaign of deplatforming and financial strangulation.
- •The shutdown comes less than a year after then U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken publicly accused African Stream of functioning as a Kremlin propaganda outlet, an allegation that while unsubstantiated, triggered a domino effect across its major social media platforms.
- •Within days, African Stream’s accounts were suspended or removed from YouTube, Meta platforms (Facebook and Instagram), Google, and TikTok.
- •Its revenue streams dried up following demonetization on X (formerly Twitter), effectively cutting off the organization from its audience and complicating its ability to operate.
“After the attacks, our ability to generate income was killed. We were unable to travel to many of the essential locations we had planned and were barely able to continue running the business,” Ahmed Kaballo, African Stream’s founder and Editor-In-Chief said.
African Stream’s impending demise underscores growing concerns about digital sovereignty and the fragility of dissent in the age of big-tech gatekeeping. The outlet’s alignment with anti-imperialist narratives placed it at odds with prevailing Western media frameworks — particularly those that minimize the legacy of post-colonial intrusion by major global powers in African economies and politics.
Despite being branded as a misinformation source by Western government-linked media outlets such as NBC and Voice of America, African Stream maintained that its reporting was factually accurate, often focusing on topics such as U.S. drone strikes in Somalia, the role of foreign military bases on the continent, and the role of Western corporates in African exploitation.
In September last year, Blinken stated that the Russian news outlet — RT — secretly ran the African Stream platform. He added that the digital media platform presented itself as a Pan-African organization but turned out to be a Kremlin ventriloquist in a Dashiki.
African Stream was especially notorious for lauding the Sahel, Russia-backed dictators, incessantly listing mostly fictional achievements of the Burkina Faso President Ibrahim Traore. While it is debatable if the Junta leader is truly a reformist, his dissociation with the French was bound to set him on a collision path with the entire Western hemisphere.
Over the years, the information war between the US with its European allies and the emerging Russia/China bloc has embroiled Africa into its fold. This has intensified after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Israel’s war in Gaza, and the Chinese interests in Taiwan. Pan-African and Socialist digital platforms have been accused by the West for integrating the continent’s desire for self-reliance and total decolonization with anti-market doctrines, a revisionist analysis of African post-independence history, and a cultish reverence for authoritarian regimes.
However, the implications of African Stream’s collapse go beyond one media house as they reflect the broader pressures faced by alternative media in an environment where dissent or diverse opinions can be algorithmically suppressed or financially asphyxiated at the flip of a switch at Silicon Valley.
While corporate media giants benefit from privileged access and legal immunity, independent outlets in the Global South struggle to assert editorial autonomy without triggering punitive measures. The rising popularity of alternative media emanates from a prevalent distrust in mainstream media outlets, whose narratives are subtly beholden to Western interests — both good and bad.