Macky Sall and the UN: investigating the shadowy Holding Price Limited poll
(Editor’s note: This is an English-language translation of a report that first appeared in our French-language edition on 19 April 2026. It has been lightly edited for brevity. Read the original here.)
Macky Sall, former president of Senegal (2012-2024), is among the candidates to lead the United Nations. His rivals include former Costa Rican vice-president Rebeca Grynspan Mayufis; Argentine diplomat Rafael Mariano Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency; and former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet Jeria. Public hearings for the candidates, organised by the president of the General Assembly, took place on 21 and 22 April 2026.
Macky Sall is the frontrunner for the post of UN secretary-general, according to text published on 7 April 2026 that claimed to report the results of an opinion poll. According to the text, the poll was conducted by an American firm, “Holding Price Limited”. The piece went viral in Senegal, circulating widely on social media, messaging platforms and in some media outlets. It was attributed to “Farid Ruben, professor of geopolitics in Washington, United States”.
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Several inconsistencies, however, appeared in the text. The first two – highlighted by internet users (1,2,3) and Senegalese media (1,2,3) – concern the poll’s origin and the identity of its supposed author. Searches by Africa Check yielded no credible information about Holding Price Limited, variously described as American and as British. We were therefore unable to establish the source of the poll. Nor could we find any trace of the purported author.
Another major inconsistency in the text was its assertion that the African Union (AU) supports Sall’s candidacy. In reality, AU backing was blocked by 20 of the 55 member states – including Senegal itself – well above the threshold of one third (a maximum of 18) required to do so. In practice, Sall’s candidacy was put forward and formally submitted by Burundi on 2 March 2026.
We took a closer look.
The X account “Macky pour l’ONU)” (“Macky Sall for the UN”) was among the first to disseminate the text, before it was picked up by several Senegalese (1,2,3) and African websites (1,2,3). The account, which has close to 13,000 followers, describes itself as a “Platform in support of Macky Sall’s candidacy for the post of United Nations Secretary-General”. It was created in February 2022, at the time when Sall – then president of Senegal – assumed the chairmanship of the AU.
An analysis of how the text spread reveals coordinated dissemination. On social media, several pro-Sall accounts amplified the message using identical wording (1,2,3,4,5). In the local press, certain Senegalese outlets republished the text in full and without verification, lending credibility to the narrative (1,2,3,4,5).
Moreover, the same text appeared in Senegalese newspapers, including as a front-page teaser in “En Relief” on 8 April 2026.
When contacted, the newspaper said it had relied on a 90-second broadcast report, which it shared with us (and we archived here).
The report, bearing the Afrique Media imprint, is said to have circulated on social media, though we could not locate it on the outlet’s own platforms.
We also approached several Senegalese media outlets that had carried the text of the alleged Holding Price Limited poll. The website Ndarinfo said that it had based its coverage on an article by Pressafrik (since removed but which we archived). Dakaractu said that it had simply republished a dispatch from Financial Afrik, which was likewise cited as a source by Seneweb.
Financial Afrik told Africa Check that it had not published the article on its website. “We posted the information on Facebook in three lines. It was deleted a few hours later on the same day, after our desk tried in vain to reach the polling firm in question and our requests to Macky Sall’s campaign team went unanswered,” the outlet said, citing as its original source a tweet published on the “Macky Sall pour l’ONU” (“Macky Sall for the UN”) X account on 7 April 2026.
Africa Check sent several questions to Patricia Balme, founder and president of the communications agency PB Com International, cited by Financial Afrik as handing Sall’s communications in connection with his UN candidacy. We received no response by the time this article was published. We also approached Yoro Dia, former coordinator of the Senegalese presidency’s communications under Macky Sall, in order to obtain further insight. Our calls and messages also went unanswered.
This is not the first time Holding Price Limited has been cited in election-related polling across Africa. Its name has appeared on several occasions in electoral contexts across the region, without it ever being possible to identify its principals clearly – a fact that raises doubts about its legitimacy and the nature of its activities.
In December 2025, the company was cited as the author of a poll on the Central African Republic presidential election, republished by certain local media, predicting that incumbent Faustin-Archange Touadera was “in a clearly favourable position to win”.
In October 2025, Holding Price Limited was cited as the source of a poll on the presidential election in Cameroon, predicting victory for Paul Biya with 57% of the vote, followed by Issa Tchiroma on 24%. (Biya would win with 53.7%, against 35.2% for Tchiroma.)
More recently, in March, a new poll attributed to the firm circulated in the Congo-Brazzaville press, predicting a victory for incumbent president Denis Sassou-Nguesso.
In each case, the methodology underpinning these polls was left undisclosed – even though the individuals they predicted as winners did go on to win their respective elections.
In relaying the text presenting Sall as the UN secretary-general frontrunner, certain media outlets – Dakaractu among them – described Holding Price Limited as a “British firm“. Yet Afrique Media referred to it as an American firm in its earlier article on the poll relating to the Congo-Brazzaville presidential election in March 2026.
We searched for traces of the company in official registries in both the United Kingdom and the United States.
For the United Kingdom, searches in the Companies House register returned no results. In the United States, there is no centralised company database equivalent to that of the UK. The OpenCorporates platform, one of the world’s largest open databases, with over 204 million records from 170 jurisdictions, including the United States, also contains no information on any firm named Holding Price Limited.
Karina Shedrofsky is an expert and director of research at the Data and Research Centre (DARC), an independent organisation offering research and data services to investigative journalists. She said that OpenCorporates “does a good job of scraping many of the US registries, so the fact that it doesn’t come up there is pretty telling”.
Our searches in the company registries of Delaware and Nevada – two states in which many US firms are incorporated – likewise revealed no trace of any company named Holding Price Limited.
The Sayari tool aggregates corporate information from around the world, though access is fee-based and restricted. Searches done by Shedrofsky found no record of any entity named Holding Price Limited. Sayari does, however, list a company called Holding Price LLC, incorporated in Florida in 2018 by an agent named Sayed M Lofty – though it has since been dissolved. Given that the articles concerning Holding Price Limited were published more recently, there is likely no connection with this company, Shedrofsky said.
Senegalese journalist Samba Dialimpa Badji, a disinformation analyst and researcher at OsloMet University in Norway, said that the aim was likely “to lend credibility to a political narrative by citing non-existent polls”.
A common thread linking the polls attributed to Holding Price Limited is the Cameroonian media outlet Afrique Media. In each of the electoral contexts mentioned – the Central African Republic, Cameroon and the Republic of Congo – this outlet has been among the principal, and often the first, sources to report polls produced by this still-untraceable firm, giving them considerable visibility. In the case of Sall’s UN candidacy, Afrique Media has notably amplified content favourable to his bid, including claims of AU endorsement.
Its founder and chief executive, Justin Tagouh, is presented as being close to Moscow. In a report on Cameroon’s 2025 presidential elections, the Cameroonian platform DataCheck, which analysed digital influence around the poll, describesTagouh as a key actor in spreading pro-Wagner propaganda, with direct links to figures such as Yevgeny Prigozhin. In April 2023, the publication Jeune Afrique described Tagouh as “the voice of Moscow”, noting that he had “distinguished himself in recent years through a pro-Russian bent and very anti-Western positions”.
Contacted by Africa Check for clarifications about the origin of the Macky Sall poll, Albert Patrick Eya’a, the outlet’s head of news, did not respond before publication.
According to Paul-Joel Kamtchang, executive director of ADISI-Cameroun and a specialist in disinformation ecosystems on the continent, Afrique Media cannot be analysed in isolation. He said that the outlet is “merely the visible part of a Russian network that has a solid sub-regional presence, notably through Justin Tagouh, who is presented as being close to the Kremlin and to Yevgeny Prigozhin’s inner circle”.
The expert noted that numerous photographs had documented meetings between Tagouh and Russian actors at various events, and that he positions himself as an intermediary facilitating Russian opportunities for several African states already engaged in diplomatic rapprochement with Moscow.
Kamtchang also highlighted the strategic role of Afrique Media within this ecosystem. According to him, “the outlet mobilises pro-Russian relay networks, participates in gatherings designed to support certain African leaders close to Russia, and recruits experts tasked with carrying an anti-Western narrative”. He added that the channel often draws on a network of economists and historians to counter Western discourse and promote the image of Russia as an alternative partner for the continent.
Beyond promoting a poll of highly questionable credibility, the text is structured as a systematic defence of Sall’s candidacy, addressing in turn the main objections raised against him in the context of the UN race.
For example, on geographical rotation – an argument advanced by countries such as Nigeria, which favour the post to rotating in favour of Latin America and the Caribbean after successive terms held by Africa and Europe under Kofi Annan and Antonio Guterres – the viral text insists that this is merely an “unwritten tradition”, instead emphasising Sall’s individual experience over regional considerations.
The text also downplays criticisms relating to civil liberties and hidden debt during the former president’s stint in power, suggesting that these would carry little weight with the diplomats supposed surveyed in the poll. Such diplomats, the text implies, would be more responsive to Sall’s international record.
The article then advances a series of arguments in his favour: multilateral experience, a role in several international crises, a broad diplomatic network and perceived acceptability among permanent members of the Security Council – all contributing to the portrayal of Sall as a natural and consensual candidate.
Taken as a whole, the text reads as advocacy designed to bolster Sall’s international credibility, reaching well beyond the presentation of a favourable poll.