The mass surveillance affair in Togo has reached a critical turning point in the ongoing political and media upheaval. In recent disclosures, journalist Thomas Dietrich has leveled accusations at a highly strategic alliance: he claims that Togolese president Faure Gnassingbé is working hand-in-hand with the Yatom family, whose patriarch Dany Yatom is the former head of Israel’s powerful intelligence service, through their private espionage services company. While these allegations lift the veil on the dangerous liaisons of the Lomé government, they also raise a crucial question about the journalistic method employed. This confrontation highlights a double failure: that of a dictatorship privatizing its security through foreign agencies, and that of instant journalism that weakens its own scoops through excessive dramatization.
Faure Gnassingbé: privatising repression with the Yatom family
The accusation against the Togolese regime goes beyond mere technological suspicion; it describes a concrete system of covert operations. By entrusting—according to these revelations—part of the country’s security and wiretapping system to the Yatom family, Faure Gnassingbé crosses a critical threshold. Calling on former high-ranking Israeli intelligence officials to lock down Togo’s public space reveals a state paranoia taken to its extreme. This collaboration with private foreign spy structures does not serve any national defense imperative. Instead, it fits squarely into the tradition of desperate dynastic regimes willing to do anything to track opponents, monitor civil society, and perpetuate a power that has lasted nearly sixty years. After the global Pegasus software scandal, this alleged collusion with the Yatom clan shows that Lomé has institutionalized spying on its own citizens. By placing Togo’s security destiny in the hands of external private interests, the government tramples on national sovereignty to ensure its own political survival.
Thomas Dietrich: the risk of scoop-as-spectacle and digital noise
However, the heavier the scandal, the more faultless the investigation must be. That is where Thomas Dietrich’s approach opens itself to criticism. By releasing names as weighty as those of the Israeli security apparatus, the journalist too often chooses the codes of confrontation and buzz on social networks rather than the rigorous formalism of major investigative reporting. Launching accusations of this magnitude on digital platforms without simultaneously publishing the body of material evidence—contracts, financial flows, official org charts, or leaked documents—weakens the impact of the revelation. Known for his lone-wolf crusader methods and constant self-dramatization of his encounters with African dictatorships, Dietrich continually flirts with ego journalism. The danger of this method is immediate: by prioritizing sensationalism and privatizing the fight, the journalist gives the Lomé regime the perfect opportunity to dismiss the affair by crying about a Western media conspiracy and manipulation. In doing so, he undermines the cause of Togolese journalists and activists who, on the ground, risk their lives to document the same abuses with silent rigor.
Two actors in the same sterile mirror
In the end, the Lomé palace and the Françafrique reporter feed each other. Faure Gnassingbé uses the frontal attacks of expatriate journalists to wave the red flag of foreign destabilization and justify the security crackdown by his services. For his part, Thomas Dietrich finds in the figure of the hyper-connected dictator the perfect antagonist to boost his audiences and shape his white-knight-of-information posture. While this duel plays out under the spotlight of social media, one victim remains in the shadows: the Togolese people. Watched by foreign technologies, deprived of healthy democratic debate, citizens endure the harsh reality of a police state. The fight for transparency and freedoms in Togo cannot be satisfied either by the secret liaisons of a paranoid power or by the virtual circus of emotion-driven journalism. It demands cold facts, unshakable evidence, and a dignity that both protagonists sometimes seem to forget.
