Authors

Dr Mukile Kasongo¹;  ¹ Haute Ecole de Commerce - Kinshasa, Congo

Discussion

Russia has in the last few years increased its footprint of influence in Africa. Although coverage of Russia-related events in francophone Africa has been the subject of recent studies  - Horák, Drmotová, Stodola & Kutej 2024; Antwi-Boasiako 2022; Duarte 2024 – to name a few, the majority of the scholarship has covered West Africa. There is still a need to add different African perspectives to the ongoing involvement of Russia in Africa. With that in mind this paper investigates the framing of Russia’s presence and activities in Africa by focusing on the coverage of events in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as it is the world’s largest and most populous francophone country. The paper will analyze news articles from two media outlets  -  African Initiative (a Russian-funded media outlet) and Forum des As (a local Congolese media outlet) published between in 2024 and 2025, capturing a period marked by two major events: the attempted failed coup by Western expats of Congolese origin in 2024 and the attack on Western embassies in 2025. Drawing on Entman (1993)’s Framing Theory, this paper will identify the dominant frames. In doing so, this paper will reveal whether these frames reflect or challenge Chakrabarty (2000) concept of ‘provincializing Europe’ or Spivak conceptualization of the subaltern (1988) when applied to a post-Soviet context.