Nigeria, Africa’s largest democracy, held its presidential election in February 2023. In the lead-up voters had to wade through a sea of political disinformation. And the spreading of false information continued as the votes were being counted – and afterwards

Kenya remains polarised in the aftermath of the August 2022 presidential election, with the opposition taking to the streets from March 2023 to demand a review of the electoral process.

Both countries were beachheads for Cambridge Analytica, the British political consultancy firm that attempted to influence general elections in Nigeria in 2015 and in Kenya in 2017.

Nearly 10 other countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, South Sudan and Sierra Leone, will hold presidential elections in 2023, and in 2024 others, such as South Africa, Ghana, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Egypt, go to the polls.

If parliamentary and local elections are included, the number rises to more than 20 African countries in 2023. Against this political backdrop and the resulting potential for disinformation, the forecast for honest public debate and post-election stability, from where we sit, is gloomy.

As we marked international fact-checking day on 2 April, here’s what we have learned from our efforts to fact-check the elections in Nigeria and Kenya, and what the African electorate can do to promote honest public debate, credible elections and evidence-based decision-making.

1) Targeting journalists, the judiciary and election management bodies is a powerful tactic

Political campaigners are increasingly targeting the media, the judiciary and election management bodies with political disinformation. These institutions are often accused of bias or incompetence, or even portrayed as corrupt or unreliable.

Some false or misleading information is used to intimidate journalists or officials perceived as a threat to political campaigns. In Nigeria, for example, there were reports of political support groups exaggerating and announcing their leader’s victory before the country’s Independent National Electoral Commission had collated results.

The aim is to undermine the credibility of these institutions and the people who work within them, to erode public confidence and to promote diversionary alternative narratives that will sow discord and confusion.

2) Ethnicity, culture and religion are elevated and exploited in elections

Elections in many African countries are seen as an ethnic census, as political mobilisation is often along ethnic lines.

As a result, public debate on key socio-economic issues, such as the economy, jobs, governance, education and healthcare is often stifled. Instead, the ethnicity of politicians is emphasised, with negative stereotyping dominating political narratives.

In Nigeria, these issues, along with political zoning and geography, came to the fore in the recently concluded elections.

Exploiting these divisions makes it easier for political campaigns to invoke ethnic, religious or even cultural solidarity, polarise and pollute the debate, and possibly win elections without addressing public policy issues.

Culture, too, is being hijacked by political dog-whistling, as we have seen in Kenya.

3) People are more connected, but voters are still vulnerable to false information

Internet use in Africa is growing, according to the latest data from the International Telecommunications Union, the United Nations agency for information, communication and technology.

However, multiple barriers make the digital experience less enabling for African voters. These include limited digital literacy skills to navigate the online landscape, inaccessible or poor quality public information, and even language. The language of the internet is often English, French or Arabic, but not every connected African speaks these languages.

Poor regulation of online spaces makes it easy for promoters of political disinformation to use data analytics, as seen in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

And when media houses erect paywalls, it makes quality information expensive and inaccessible to many people, forcing them to seek out lower quality information. As some have argued, “democracy dies behind paywalls”.

4) Government regulation is risky and inadequate

Most threats to democracy are regulated by governments. However, when it comes to political disinformation, government regulation is difficult because some in power use the levers of the state to spread false and misleading information during elections in order to retain power.

In some countries, such as Uganda and Nigeria, when social media platforms have cracked down on such disinformation networks, the authorities have retaliated by shutting down the platforms.

In addition, state authorities can sometimes mean to combat false information and hate speech, but end up suppressing the right to information and freedom of expression.

While it is useful to have laws to promote privacy, digital security and safety, and to encourage the circulation of verifiable information, these should be balanced against the risk of stifling honest public debate.

5) Platform accountability in African elections still a work in progress

Most of the popular social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram, Tiktok and YouTube – used in Africa are owned by foreign companies based in or operating from the US, Europe or China.

These platforms often focus on Africa during elections and work with fact-checkers, including Africa Check, to tackle online disinformation.

They invest in tools, funding and people to tackle misinformation in the African context, but often on a project basis. Once elections are over, they move on. It is therefore not easy to hold these companies accountable for the spread of hate speech and political disinformation on their platforms.

It’s also not clear how algorithms prioritise online debates on these platforms, how certain issues are amplified and how false information is de-amplified. The sustainability of strategies, tools and tactics to fight online disinformation during elections is difficult to achieve for proprietary and financial reasons.

The question remains: how do African governments and civil society hold these foreign multinationals accountable for political disinformation, beyond the obvious data protection and digital privacy laws? Put another way, if these platforms don’t promote accurate data and honest public debate on the continent, what recourse do African governments have?

What can the African voter do in the face of political disinformation during elections?

Here are five of our tips:

1. Media, digital and information literacy helps voters understand how the media works, how to assess the reliability of news stories, how to verify information, where to get credible information, and how to safely and intelligently spot and stop the cycle of political disinformation. More literacy clinics are needed to help counter the evolving strategies of information pollution. Election management bodies and other institutions must also work to develop and implement clear and transparent communication strategies to provide timely information on contested issues.
2. In all the countries where Africa Check works, it has become increasingly clear that civil society, media organisations, journalists, government agencies, technology platforms and the public need to work together to monitor, pre-empt, debunk and call out harmful political disinformation. These collaborative efforts have worked in Kenya and Nigeria, and will be used in Senegal and South Africa for their next elections.
3. It is important to understand the history, culture, religion and political context before developing strategies to target political and electoral disinformation. You need to understand the context of the issues being publicly debated, unpack all the angles of the conversation, and identify how those angles are being abused to further social divisions and spread disinformation. Then take appropriate action to break the cycle without alienating the people you are trying to reach with credible information.
4. While fact-checking alone may not be enough, it is useful to empower fact-checkers through material, financial and support with tools, so that countries enable more people to fact-check and debunk for the public. Fact-checkers help the public sort out fact from fiction and hold public figures accountable for the claims they make.
5. As technology evolves, fact-checking organisations need to build partnerships with technology platforms to develop tools that keep pace with the evolution of disinformation. Sophisticated election disinformation campaigns are highly coordinated, using tactics and strategies that reach many people quickly. Having tools developed through artificial intelligence and machine learning that can detect patterns, identify trends, and map the trajectory and actors of political disinformation networks will help provide early warning and disrupt these networks.

One last thing …

Ultimately, African countries need to find ways to build resilience against political disinformation. This requires a sustained effort to promote transparency, accountability and democratic values. This will help public figures and political campaigns to base their public statements on evidence. Countries need to invest in raising awareness of the dangers of disinformation and promoting critical thinking skills among citizens, even as they devise ways to ask social media platforms to label or remove false information and crack down on disinformation networks.

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Written by Alphonce Shiundu, Kenya editor and Motunrayo Joel, Nigeria deputy editor/health researcher at Africa Check.

Claims: Six claims, about the cost of fertiliser and power, the number of livestock in Kenya and the rest of Africa, and the size of the country’s economy in the region

Verdict: Three correct, one mostly correct, one incorrect and one unproven

Source: Kenyan president William Ruto (January 2023)

• During his chat with journalists, Ruto was correct to claim that his government had lowered the cost of fertiliser.
• He was also right that a gas power plant produced expensive electricity, while hydropower was much cheaper. A claim about geothermal energy was unproven.
• He was incorrect to say that Kenya had the third highest number of livestock in Africa. But a claim about the size of the country’s economy “in the region” was mostly correct.

Africa Check

For the first time since he was elected, Kenyan president William Ruto invited members of the media to a discussion at State House, his official residence.

He answered questions about topics such as his administration’s promises to create jobs, lower the cost of living, boost food security and improve manufacturing.

Africa Check vetted six of his claims.

We asked spokesperson Hussein Mohamed for the source of the president’s data. Mohamed said he would send it to us, and we will update this report when we get it.

Claim: “We’ve reduced the cost of fertiliser from about KSh6,000 to KSh3,500.”

Verdict: Correct

Fertilisers contain chemicals that help improve the growth and productivity of plants.

Agriculture makes up a fifth (22.4%) of Kenya’s gross domestic product (GDP), a common measure of the size of an economy.

When Ruto was sworn in on 13 September 2022, he promised to lower the price of a 50 kilogram bag of fertiliser from KSh6,500 (about US$50) to KSh3,500 ($30). This was just before the start of Kenya’s rainy season, which runs from October to December.

The agriculture ministry announced the lower price a week later. It said farmers could buy the subsidised fertiliser from the National Cereals and Produce Board. The board later posted photos online of farmers collecting the fertiliser.

In October farmers interviewed by the media said that they had bought the fertiliser at the lower price. We therefore rate the president’s claim as correct.

Commercial fertiliser prices remain high 

But it’s a different story on the open market.  Here a 50kg bag of fertiliser can cost more than KSh5,000 ($40), and in some instances as much as KSh9,000 ($70).

A 2018 study by the Alliance for Green Revolution, a nonprofit working in 11 African countries, estimated that private importers provide half the fertiliser used in Kenya. – Dancan Bwire

Claim: “The Muhoroni power plant is producing energy at 52 US cents per kilowatt hour.”

Verdict: Mostly correct

The gas turbine plant in Muhoroni, a town in southwestern Kenya about 300 kilometres from the capital Nairobi, has a capacity of 60 megawatts (MW).The plant helps stabilise the fragile power grid in western Kenya.

Thermal power plants – like the Muhoroni gas plant – burn fuel that boils water, producing steam. The steam then drives electricity generators. This is in contrast to hydropower plants, where falling water drives the generators.

Ruto used the Muhoroni plant as an example of the high cost of energy in Kenya, due to thermal generation. He compared it to the cost of electricity from hydropower sources, produced at four US cents per kilowatt hour.

A kilowatt hour (KWh) measures the energy used by an electrical device. It’s the measure seen on your electricity bill.

The Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) operates the Muhoroni plant and sells the electricity generated to Kenya Power, the state utility.

Kenya Power said they would send us information on the plant, but have not yet done so. A presidential task force reviewing controversial power purchase agreements in Kenya has also struggled to access this information.

So we checked the firm’s most recent annual report. In the 2021/22 financial year, Kenya Power bought 40 gigawatt hours (GWh), or 40 million KWh, from the Muhoroni plant at KSh2.03 billion. This works out to KSh50.69 for every kilowatt hour. (Note: The World Bank calculates the cost of power in dollars per kilowatt hour.)

In 2021, according to the most recent economic survey from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics,  one US dollar cost an average of KSh109.65. At that rate, Kenya Power bought each kilowatt hour from Muhoroni for 46.23 US cents.

The gas plant’s output accounted for only 0.5% of the 7,911 GWh the utility bought that financial year. But proportionately, it cost nearly 10 times this, or 4.2%, of the total KSh48.4 billion Kenya Power spent to buy electricity.

Ruto’s claim about the plant’s high cost is mostly correct. – Makinia Juma

Claim: “We are getting power from our hydros at four US cents per KWh.”

Verdict: Correct

KenGen produces electricity from 14 hydropower plants. (Note: See here for more details about how electricity is generated.)

Nine of these – including Gitaru, Kiambere and Turkwel – are large plants. Five are much smaller.

In the 2021/22 financial year, Kenya Power bought 3,157 GWh, or 3.157 billion KWh, from eight of the large plants. This works out to KSh2.74 per KWh.

The Sang’oro station is one of the nine larger hydros, but for unclear reasons is treated separately in the annual report. The bill for the 10 GWh, or 10 million KWh, bought from the plant comes to KSh752 million, or KSh6.83 per KWh.

The average cost of electricity from the large hydros is therefore KSh4.79. This works out to 4.36 US cents at the 2021 exchange rate of KSh109.65.

The report also lumps wind power with the small hydropower stations. Without more detailed data from Kenya Power, we are unable to work out an exact figure.

But the available data does back up Ruto’s claim. – Makinia Juma

Claim: “We have 400 megawatts of capped geothermal energy.”

Verdict: Unproven

We asked the State House spokesperson what Ruto meant by “capped” geothermal energy. We will update this report should we hear back.

Geothermal energy is the natural heat stored in the earth’s crust. To produce it, wells are drilled deep underground, and the resulting steam drives large turbines that produce electricity.

Kenya has geothermal potential of up to 10,000 MW, according to the country’s energy regulator. So far, 828 MW is “installed capacity”, or “the maximum theoretical electric output a power station can produce when operating at 100%”. (Note: Kenya Power has a higher figure of 950 MW.)

In its most recent annual report, published in 2020, the state-run Geothermal Development Company said it had a target of increasing its capacity to 1,065 MW, by 2030.

Projects totalling 430 MW are in development, according to the chief executive’s statement in the report. Most of this is in partnership with KenGen, which put out a statement on the day Ruto spoke to the media.

There is publicly available data showing that 400 MW or so is being developed. But without confirmation from Ruto’s spokesperson it is unclear whether the president was referring to this. – Grace Gichuhi

Claim: “We are the third-largest livestock holder as a country in Africa.”

Verdict: Incorrect

In making this claim, the president was talking about the potential of Kenya’s leather industry. We traced the claim to a 2015 World Bank study on the industry. This said that “Kenya is the third largest livestock holder in Africa”.

Dr Timothy Njagi is a research fellow at the Tegemeo Institute of Agriculture Policy and Development, an agriculture policy think tank in Kenya. He said we should check with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for data on livestock numbers.

FAO lists 18 categories of livestock, from bees and chickens to buffalos, cattle and horses.

Njagi said we should focus on camels, cattle, goats and sheep as these are “referred to as traditional livestock.” They are also the animals listed in 2012 government research on the leather industry.

Njagi also said that since the Covid pandemic, Kenya has lost a significant number of its poultry, as farmers opted out due to high food costs. This volatility is also why our focus is on “traditional” livestock.

FAO uses the official numbers. When these are unavailable, it turns to “non-official sources or historical data”. The agency’s most recent figures are from 2021.

Below is a ranking of African countries by livestock holding:

Source: FAO 2021. See our calculations here.

By this breakdown, Kenya has the fifth – not third – highest number of livestock in Africa.

The chief statistician at the FAO also told Africa Check that “Kenya is not the third-largest livestock holder in Africa regardless of any type of livestock”.

The organisation used numbers from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics on livestock production and data on livestock, and the net livestock trade, or total imports less exports.

The agency also shared this table from their publicly available database that shows “live animals”.

“The analysis shows that in 2020/21, Kenya is the eighth livestock holder in Africa (all types of livestock combined),” the FAO said in an email.

“It should be noted that different data sources and methods to derive figures used to rank countries will give different rankings.” – Tess Wandia

Claim: “Kenya has the largest economy in this region.”

Verdict: Mostly correct

Ruto made this claim during a discussion of Kenya’s interventions in conflicts in several African countries. We have asked his spokesperson what he meant by “region”.

Kenya has its military in missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Somalia.

Former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta is mediating the conflicts in the DRC and Ethiopia, while the government is also concerned about conflict in South Sudan.

During the discussion, Ruto said that he travelled to Ethiopia, Uganda, DRC, and South Sudan in 2022 to discuss regional stability.

“We have a huge interest in the stability of this region. If this region is unstable, the biggest hit will be on our economy,” he said.

Kenya shares a border with five countries: Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia.

It is also part of the East Africa Community (EAC), made up of seven countries – Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, DRC, Rwanda and Burundi.

Kenya, Somalia, Uganda and Ethiopia are part of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (Igad), which has eight members. The others are South Sudan, Sudan, Djibouti and Eritrea.

Then there is the Eastern Africa Standby Force, a combined military set up to “enhance peace and security in the eastern Africa region”. Its 10 members are Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda.

We checked for the most recent data from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund on the 14 countries mentioned above.

The World Bank’s most recent GDP data is for 2021. But it last tracked Eritrea’s GDP in 2011, and South Sudan’s in 2015.

The data shows that in the EAC, Kenya has the largest economy, at US$110.3 billion. It has the second largest economy in the Igad region, after Ethiopia’s $111.3 billion.

The IMF released new GDP estimates in October 2022, showing that Kenya was the largest economy among the 14 countries. The IMF data also shows the Kenyan economy has consistently outperformed Ethiopia’s.

Here is a table showing the breakdown, region and size of the economy based on the two data sources.

Therefore we rate Ruto’s claim as mostly correct. – Tess Wandia

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This report was written by Africa Check, a non-partisan fact-checking organisation. View the original piece on their website.