Political Handlers Take Their Election Playbooks to Africa. -part 2

By Dionne Searcey –nytimes.com

Photography by NHYIRABA JOEY

Riva Levinson, a political consultant once employed by Paul Manafort, has worked for both opposition parties and governments in Africa 

“They also seek to manipulate the election narrative by planting press stories or neutralizing negative narratives on social media,” Mr. Page said.

In Nigeria, the opposition party also tapped another consulting firm, Ballard Partners, to help facilitate meetings for Mr. Abubakar on Capitol Hill as part of a $90,000 a month contract. Brian D. Ballard, the firm’s owner, was a top fund-raiser in the Trump campaign.

Ms. Levinson accompanied Mr. Abubakar to many of his meetings in Washington, and Holland & Knight, an American law firm, lobbied the State Department to secure his visa. Scott D. Mason, a former aid to Mr. Trump, led the law firm’s effort, according to filings.

Some Western firms are trying to exploit the Trump administration’s concerns that China is surpassing America’s influence on the continent, and are marketing their African clients as solutions.

Mr. Ballard’s firm says it is adding consultants with ties to Africa, betting that it will win more clients as the Trump administration tries to counteract China, which has offered billions of dollars in infrastructure gifts and loans to governments across the mineral-rich continent to gain a foothold.

“It is undeniably in America’s interest to combat China’s growing geopolitical influence in Africa,” said James Rubin, who is in charge of international affairs at Ballard Partners and was an assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration.

This month the government of Zimbabwe hired Ballard Partners on a contract worth $500,000 to improve relations with the United States, according to government filings.

Longtime African election observers say that in the region, opportunities abound for Western firms to take advantage of editorial standards at local newspapers that can be less rigorous than in other parts of the world. They also can manipulate social media in ways tested and refined in recent elections in the West.

The process of representing governments abroad can get messy. Regardless of firms’ ties to the White House, charges of fraud and violence around election time have cast a pall on the work of some consultants, jeopardizing their own image.

In 2016, the government of President Ali Bongo Ondimba of Gabon hired Ogilvy, a global public relations firm, to bring international reporters to Gabon’s capital, Libreville, for one-on-one interviews with the president at his seaside palace. Mr. Bongo won re-election that year, though the opposition criticized the fairness of the vote and violence broke out.

Last year, Mercury Public Affairs announced it was working for the government of Cameroon ahead of its presidential election. But it quickly rescinded the deal amid charges of human rights violations by Cameroon’s military.

Not long after, Glover Park Group, an American firm, picked up a contract working for the Cameroonian Embassy in Washington. The firm’s representatives send regular dispatches to reporters with government-friendly spins on events in Cameroon, which is teetering on the brink of a civil war with separatists.

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