Nairobi, Kenya – February 25, 2025 – FactSpace West Africa (FSWA) participated in a one-day review meeting of Africa Check’s post election 2024 coverage for organizations across the continent.
The event, hosted at the Movenpick Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya, on February 25, 2025, brought together African fact-checking organizations that covered elections in the year under review – Algeria, Namibia, Ghana, South Africa, Tunisia.
The aim was to share ideas on the successes and challenges during their election coverage activities.
FactSpace West Africa was represented by Rabiu Alhassan, our Executive Director and Alfa Shaban, the editor.
The theme of the meeting was: Lessons from collaborations: Reflections on safeguarding information integrity during elections.
Dr. Hlalani Gumpo, head of outreach at Africa Check emphasized how the coalition model of covering elections allows separate newsrooms to do work that compliments one another instead of competing against each other.
She also shared insights on how Africa Check leveraged local language content creators during national elections in South Africa, highlighting the inclusion of sign language in their reports during the period.
Alfa joined a panel that discussed the topic: Fact-checking in action – Insights from the electoral period.
Rabiu joined the other two panels that shared insights on The role of media and fact-checking collaborations in elections and Empowering the public through media literacy.
Prof Kimani of the Aga Khan University in his closing remarks and key takeaways session, highlighted the trust deficit that media suffers across the continent and how information overload could be counterproductive to the work of journalists.
“We don’t know what is safe for us to say, we don’t know what is safe for us to publish. Self censorship is a bigger obstacle than legislative constraints.. because it is you electing your own standards,” he said.
He further advocated that it was time to indiginize knowledge to allow local populations across Africa to better appreciate the work that fact-checkers do.
GhanaFact, a project under FSWA, was part of the 2024 Ghana Fact-checking Coalition (GFC) that worked together with Ghana’s only other International Fact-checking Network (IFCN) signatories – Dubawa Ghana and Fact-Check Ghana – to cover the 2024 general elections in terms of fact-checking claims and by so doing protecting the integrity of information during the period.
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