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Over 200 of Africa’s finest fact-checkers and experts have converged at Ghana’s premier university, the University of Ghana, Legon, on October 9, 2024, for the beginning of a two-day Africa Facts Summit.
Co-hosted by Africa Check and local partners DUBAWA Ghana, the fact-checking arm of the Centre for Journalism and Innovation and Development (CJID), and Ghana Fact, the summit aims to neutralise the effect of information disorder in Africa’s democracy.
It is under the theme: “Countering misinformation and disinformation in Africa: Challenges, Innovations and Strategic Responses.’
Prof Abena Yeboah-Banin, Head of Department Communications Studies at the University of Ghana set the ball rolling with her welcome address, teasing out salient issues of concern about disinformation and how it is affecting Ghana’s information ecosystem.
Noko Magkota, Executive Director of Africa Check was a man of few words but the effect of disinformation was not lost in his remark. The Keynote Speaker, Onica Makwakwa, Executive Director at the Global Digital Inclusion Partnership, provided insights on how disinformation is affecting Africa’s democratic institutions particularly, gender related issues. She said Africa needs african solutions to its problems and challenged all fact checkers and stakeholders to pool resources and expertise to combat the canker of disinformation.
With at least ten African countries, including Ghana, expected to have elections in the last quarter of 2024, the super election year, the lived disinformation experiences of fact-checkers and experts across the continent came to the fore.
From the rattling of gunshots to disperse angry demonstrators in Nigeria to the riotous youth in Kenya who forced their president into sacking his cabinet, from gendered and sexualised acts of disinformation littered across Africa’s media landscape to the silencing of the media in Captain Ibrahim Traore’s Burkina Faso, fact-checkers from the 50 member Africa Fact Network shared insights about the issue of disinformation in Africa’s governance architecture and how they are trying to combat it through fact-checking and other media literacy campaigns.
At breakout sessions in seminar rooms of the Cedi Conference Centre in Accra, the experts took fact-checkers to the streets of Kenya, Abuja, DR Congo, Chambers of Parliament in Ghana, South Africa, and Senegal. They showed how disinformation played out in different worrying contexts.
In all cases, the truth was assassinated whilst deception and manipulation took centre stage by malign actors jostling for power, fame and money.
For the next 48 hours, the challenge is on fact-checkers across the continent to find ways of countering the activities of these malign actors both in and out of government and provide a more resilient information architecture. Topics to be addressed include misinformation in political contexts, misinformation targeting specific communities, the role of the media in shaping narratives, digital tools and technology in combating disinformation, and challenges and strategies in countering misinformation.
Some of the experts who will handle some of these topics include Bisan Habu of the CJID, Rabiu Alhassan of Fact Space West Africa, Dancan Bwire of Africa Check, Kenya, Ange Kasongo of Balobaki Check, Kwaku Krobea Asante of Fact-check Ghana, and Rabeb Aloui of BN Check.
The Summit is expected to end on October 10, 2024, after a gala night to honour deserving fact-checkers who have done some impactful work in the year under review.
