Sovereign Intelligence: A Data Governance Framework for Detecting and Countering Cognitive Warfare Operations in Francophone African Digital Ecosystems

This paper proposes and validates a data governance framework grounded in DAMA-DMBOK principles and medallion architecture for the systematic detection, classification, and countering of coordinated influence operations targeting African nations' soft power and political sovereignty through digital media ecosystems. Using the AFCON 2025 Final controversy as its primary empirical case study, the research documents a multi-vector cognitive warfare operation produced in Algeria, distributed through transnational media nodes, and amplified by platform algorithmic architecture that achieved sufficient penetration to require a royal counter-statement from His Majesty King Mohammed VI of Morocco in January 2025. The paper makes three original contributions: (1) a Narrative Intelligence Taxonomy (NIT) for multilingual African social media classification; (2) a Sovereign Data Pipeline (SDP) architecture built on medallion principles for real-time influence operation detection; and (3) a Data Sovereignty Policy Framework (DSPF) integrating technical infrastructure with digital literacy education for Francophone African governments. The research demonstrates that existing data governance frameworks, designed for enterprise data quality management, contain transferable structural logic applicable to national information security filling a critical gap in both the data governance and cognitive warfare literatures.