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Claim: Multiple Facebook accounts claim fire has engulfed the Adum market in the Ashanti Region of Ghana.
Verdict: False! There was no fire incident at the Adum market in Kumasi on Monday, March 23, 2026. The videos being shared to support the claim are from a 2025 incident.
Full Text
Multiple claims circulating on social media allege that a fire has engulfed the Adum market, one of Ghana’s largest open-air markets.
Facebook posts such as this, this, this and this made the claim with under one-minute videos showing stores in multistorey complexes on fire while people stand by and watch.
Market fires in Ghana are not uncommon, so such claims are easily believable, as evidenced by the responses under one of the claimants’ posts shown below.
News reports of fires in different markets across the country are documented online, such as here and here. A study by Aning-Agyei et al., (2025) notes that such fires have resulted in the destruction of several physical infrastructures, productive assets, sources of livelihood, and in some cases, death. According to the study, billions of Cedis have been lost to three major fire outbreaks between 2024 and 2025. Consequently, news of market fires creates serious anxiety and panic, particularly among investors in the affected areas.
Although the recent claims have received hundreds of reactions so far, some posts, such as this one, have challenged them as “vile disinformation and misinformation” with political motivations. DUBAWA decided to investigate due to the potential to mislead.
Verification
DUBAWA took a screenshot of the video and subjected it to Google Reverse Image search. The search results showed that the image matched multiple previous online uploads.
Switching the search from visual to text showed that while the video was indeed of the Adum market on fire, it was from a 2025 incident and did not happen on Monday, March 23, 2026, as alleged. The search pointed to news reports such as this and this, which documented the 2025 fire incident, and to this video by Citi FM, which exactly matches the one used to make the claim.
Additionally, given that no credible media house has also reported on any alleged fire at the Adum market on March 23, 2026, DUBAWA finds the claim to be false.
DUBAWA cannot confirm if the claims were politically motivated; however, an analysis of the profiles of some of the claimants, such as this and this, showed active online political association with the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).
Conclusion
Based on the above, we conclude that claims the Kumasi Adum market was engulfed in fire on March 23, 2026, is false.
