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Claim: Social media users are sharing a video claiming that heavy rainfall recently caused severe flooding in Ashaley Botwe, Greater Accra Region, submerging homes and disrupting residents’ lives.
Verdict: False. The viral video does not show flooding in Ashaley Botwe, Accra. Verification reveals that the footage originated from Ivanovka, Russia, in 2024 and is unrelated to the recent rainfall in Ghana.
Full Text
Social media users on X and Facebook are circulating a video purportedly showing floodwaters engulfing houses in Ashaley Botwe following heavy rainfall in Accra.
The video captures a vast area overwhelmed by muddy floodwaters, with several houses almost completely submerged. In many scenes, only the roofs of the buildings are visible above the waterline, suggesting severe flooding. The footage appears to show a residential community, with utility poles and electric lines standing in the middle of the floodwaters while rows of houses stretch into the background.
The accompanying caption claims the incident occurred in Ashaley Botwe after a heavy downpour in Accra. “Heavy rainfall caused flooding in Ashaley Botwe, submerging several houses and disrupting lives,” one X user, @Mr_Antwi, wrote.
The claim was published on May 25, 2025, at 7:35 p.m., just hours after rainfall was recorded in parts of Accra. The video has garnered over 100,000 views across X and Facebook, gaining traction amid recurring concerns over perennial flooding in parts of the capital following recent rains.
DUBAWA decided to investigate the claim due to the potential to mislead.
Verification
DUBAWA used the InVID video verification tool to extract keyframes from the footage for reverse image searches. The searches showed that the footage is unrelated to Ghana.
A Yandex reverse image search traced the video to reports published on May 7, 2024, about flooding in the Russian village of Ivanovka.
The original caption accompanying the video was in Russian. When translated into English using Google Translate, it reads, “This is what’s happening all over the world. The village of Ivanovka is underwater.”
The same visuals also appeared in a YouTube video published on April 14, 2025.
Further analysis of the footage shows an environment that raises doubts about the Ghana claim. Some of the visible architectural features and the surrounding landscape do not match the typical residential setting of Ashaley Botwe.
Additionally, no credible Ghanaian media outlet or official institution reported flooding of that magnitude in Ashaley Botwe, matching the exact scenes shown in the viral video.
Conclusion
The viral video claiming to show flooding in Ashaley Botwe after heavy rainfall is false. The footage is old and originates from Ivanovka, Russia, in 2024, not Ghana.
