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# Sahel States Launch Joint Media Service
- URL: https://movement.mymidnight.blog/sahel-states-launch-joint-state-media-service/
- Published: 2026-10-12T21:52:07.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-15T22:44:05.000Z
- Description: "We had to strike back... to ensure that these platforms could spread our own narrative."
- Author: Joe Wilkins
- Tags: Governing Parties

A new state media service has been launched in West Africa, under the shared control of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES): Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. Called *Tafouk TV*, the confederal media apparatus officially launched on September 16th, with a series of broadcasts out of a studio in Bamako, the capital of Mali.

According to media analyst firm [Broadcast Media Africa](https://news.broadcastmediaafrica.com/2026/10/02/tafouk-tvs-canal-distribution-puts-satellite-carriage-and-content-partnerships-under-focus/?ref=movement.mymidnight.blog), the AES broadcasting initiative is currently spearheaded by veteran Malian broadcast journalist Salif Sanogo. Having begun his career as a correspondent with pan-African station *Africa Radio* (formerly Africa N°1) in 1995, Sanogo brings decades of [media experience](https://croissanceafrique.com/mali-qui-est-salif-sanogo-un-mastodonte-de-la-presse-malienne-nomme-a-la-tete-de-la-television-de-laes/?ref=movement.mymidnight.blog) to the role, including years of correspondent work for Western media corporations like the BBC.

Behind Sanogo is an experienced team of press workers, like Sékou Tangara, a deputy coordinator who holds a master's in media and communication from Cheikh Anta Diop University in Senegal, [per *Croissance Afrique*](https://croissanceafrique.com/mali-qui-est-salif-sanogo-un-mastodonte-de-la-presse-malienne-nomme-a-la-tete-de-la-television-de-laes/?ref=movement.mymidnight.blog).

The station currently transmits three hour-long daily news bulletins in West African languages like Bambara and Hausa, along with colonial languages like French and English. The subject area for each broadcast varies, but typically centers around developments within the AES, with four main segments: standard news analysis; a round-table discussion called "A Vous la Parole" (The Floor is Yours); a correspondent segment on intrastate security operations called "Ligne de Front" (Front Line); and a fact-checking segment called Sahel Check, dedicated to assessing social media disinformation and Western corporate media narratives.

Though broadcast out of Mali, *Tafouk TV* is unique as a state media apparatus in that its ownership is distributed evenly across the AES. State-run media is typically produced on a country-by-country basis, with relatively few examples of joint ventures shared between countries. The closest parallel is *La Nueva Televisora del Sur*, or teleSUR, which is primarily funded and operated by the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela through the Bolivarian System of Communication and Information, with minority contributions from the Republics of Cuba and Nicaragua. 

For the Sahel States, it represents a step toward sovereign control of the information and media ecosystem, which has long been dominated by Western media enterprises.

In Spring of 2026, the countries comprising the AES began expelling Western corporate journalists and suspending broadcast of select foreign channels. Authorities in [Burkina Faso](https://africa.businessinsider.com/local/lifestyle/burkina-faso-suspends-another-foreign-news-channel-over-the-glorification-of/2f06cs3?ref=movement.mymidnight.blog), for example, suspended French outlet *TV5 Monde* in May, citing offenses ranging from the spread of disinformation to the glorification of terrorism through speculative and superficial coverage of the ongoing security crisis in the Northern portion of the country.

According to the US State Department's anti-AES Africa Center for Strategic Studies, the sovereign Burkinabe government may have had control over as little as 30 percent of the country's territory as of 2025, the rest being contested by Islamic extremist groups such as Ansarul Islam, which emerged in the years following [US intervention in](https://journals.abuad.edu.ng/ajsd/article/view/2129?ref=movement.mymidnight.blog) Libya. As many commentators and scholars [have argued](https://web5.jamaica-gleaner.com/article/commentary/20260513/norris-mcdonald-empire-theft-france-us-and-uaes-hidden-war-africa?ref=movement.mymidnight.blog#1), US meddling in Libya shattered the Libyan state and flooded the Sahel and much of Africa with black market weapons. Over a decade later, the [ongoing antagonism](https://africasacountry.com/2023/02/western-media-is-missing-the-point?ref=movement.mymidnight.blog) of AES states by Western corporate media is viewed as a continuation of interventionist meddling in the region, with outlets like *TV5 Monde* undermining the legitimacy of any government that dares emerge from Libya's wreckage.

"We had to strike back... to ensure that these platforms could spread our own narrative," Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop [said in a statement](https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20260929-tafouk-tv-the-russia-backed-channel-at-the-heart-of-sahel-juntas-media-push?ref=movement.mymidnight.blog) explaining the decision to launch *Tafouk TV*.

Against this backdrop, the new tri-state media agency can be viewed as a novel experiment not only in the history of state media operations, but in the way states contend for agency over the information-space, a terrain which, like West Africa herself, has long been dominated by Western corporate interests.

**More on Africa:** [*Communist League of Uganda Hosts First Congress*](https://movement.mymidnight.blog/communist-league-of-uganda-hosts-first-congress/)