FactSpace West Africa participated in a week-long workshop for organisations in Ghana working towards combatting disinformation in Africa.
The workshop, organised by the African Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS) aims to develop Ghanaian counter-disinformation Defender Communities by building trust and training researchers, journalists, and practitioners with the skills required to identify, expose, and combat disinformation campaigns, within and from external sources.
Mark Duerkson of ACSS in his opening address stressed the importance of the workshop within the context of a surge of external operations targeting countries in sub-Saharan Africa to disrupt democracies and rupture existing fault lines to achieve parochial motives of threat actors.
In the case of Ghana, the workshop’s importance is also tied to how participants could combat mis- and dis-information in the period leading to, during and after the 2024 general elections.
The programme, hosted at the Kempinski Hotel Gold Coast City in Accra, started on September 17 and concluded on September 20. The FactSpace team was led by our Director, Rabiu Alhassan, alongside six other team members.
Fig 1 – Group photo of the FactSpace West Africa team at the conference
The training included topics such as an overview of Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) and Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISAC), approaches to understand and counter disinformation; an orientation to the Fence and DISARM frameworks (open-source, master framework for fighting disinformation).
The participants had hands-on training in applying these frameworks through open-source OpenCTI research tools and analytic report writing.
One of the main instructors, Victoras Dauksas, head of Debunk.org, emphasised the importance of ISAC communities in combating FIMI operations: ” Remember always that you are stronger together in facing threat actors as much as you are in protecting one another and boosting your reach and influence as a unit.”
Fig 2 – Victoras Dauksas, head of debunk.org (at the back) in a group photo with the FactSpace West Africa team
Also, in attendance at the programme included Fact-Check Ghana, Dubawa Ghana, Joy News, Metro TV and TV3. Other attendees were cybersecurity experts, security analysts and actors in the digital disinformation ecosystem.
Since its inception in 1999, the Africa Centre has served as a forum for research, academic programs, and the exchange of ideas to enhance citizen security by strengthening the effectiveness and accountability of African institutions.
By: FactSpace West Africa
