Organizations Wage War on Fake News in Africa

The bat­tle to deal with deceit, mis­in­for­ma­tion, and its relat­ed ills, or fake news, has been on for many years. You’ll see me use the word “bat­tle” many times in my writ­ings on this subject.

It’s a bat­tle because the ter­rain is akin to war­fare. In a bat­tle where you either win or you lose, you come pre­pared with tools and resources that help you fight in order to win. If you don’t win, you pre­pare for anoth­er fight along the way.

I wrote this piece in May but put it on the shelf for a few months as I pre­pared for the launch of this web­site. And just before launch, I lis­tened to an inter­view on NPR Fresh Air in which the authors of the book Like War, P.W. Singer, and Emi­ly T. Brook­ling dis­cussed cyber war­fare. Right then I felt a height­ened sense of how urgent the sub­ject had become.

In a recent exam­i­na­tion of the mat­ter writ­ten for the U.S. Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions by Robert Ches­ney, the writer states that the issue is “set to take a turn for the worse.“ Even more, Ches­ney says the issue has “fright­en­ing impli­ca­tion for for­eign affairs and nation­al security.”

Information Warfare

Today, the orga­ni­za­tions and coun­tries that want to win on the inter­net are engaged in what is called infor­ma­tion war­fare. There is even a name for it: cyber war­fare. You plan your defens­es and exe­cute a strat­e­gy so that your adver­saries on the web, who want to take you down through mis­in­for­ma­tion, do not suc­ceed. How? You erect a fire­wall to block their intru­sion mechanisms.

For those who pre­fer to fight anoth­er way, they’ll attack the sources which the intru­sion is com­ing from. This is known as a counter-attack. Some use espi­onage, spy­ing, for exam­ple, in order to gain an advan­tage over those plan­ning to destroy you. The mil­i­tary is good at this kind of game of maneuvering.

Fake news, a man­i­fes­ta­tion of this prob­lem, is gain­ing ground. But fake news or false infor­ma­tion is not new even though it is the sub­ject of so much news today.

Fake news is infor­ma­tion that is intend­ed to mis­lead. Oth­ers call it dis­in­for­ma­tion. I pre­fer the word mis­in­for­ma­tion. On the inter­net where the prob­lem is ram­pant, it’s even dif­fi­cult to get a cor­rect def­i­n­i­tion of fake news because every­one has their own take on it. So I skipped all of it and went instead to Mer­ri­am-Web­ster online. They define it in many ways but the below seemed applic­a­ble to what we are talk­ing about.

Fake News in Africa 

“The print­ing and dis­sem­i­na­tion of spu­ri­ous news are hard­ly new, but the term fake news is,” accord­ing to Mer­ri­am-Web­ster online. The key­word here is spu­ri­ous. Fol­low­ing this stan­dard, the whole thing boils down to false or erro­neous infor­ma­tion with the intent to deceive.

In the real world of the dark web, how­ev­er, where users dis­guise mul­ti­ple iden­ti­ties and pre­tend to be real, it is dif­fi­cult to sep­a­rate fact from fiction.

When it comes to fake African news; mis­in­for­ma­tion about the African con­ti­nent, half-truths, mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and incom­plete infor­ma­tion such as telling just your side of a sto­ry, is ram­pant. Some of it comes not just through deceit, but through igno­rance as well.

“The dis­sem­i­na­tion of mis­in­for­ma­tion through social media and main­stream news out­lets is a glob­al one, and Africa has not been spared,” accord­ing to U.S‑based Cen­ter for Strate­gic and Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies which held a dis­cus­sion on the sub­ject in 2017.

Talk Is Cheap 

Sad­ly many African them­selves, while we gripe and com­plain that the news is not fair, have done very lit­tle to fight back or cor­rect the news. Most of what I’ve seen as far as this mat­ter is con­cerned are dis­cus­sion groups, speech­es, meet­ings, news con­fer­ences, and blog posts that crit­i­cize the nature of the report­ing. Many films have been inspired by this, and many tele­vi­sion chan­nels and news­pa­pers have formed because of this. But not much to point out what’s wrong and then take the crit­i­cal next steps to try to fix it. This takes time and effort.

With the excep­tion of schol­ar­ly books writ­ten on the sub­ject and taught at uni­ver­si­ties in Amer­i­ca, there is no orga­nized effort to real­ly deal with it so that there is accountability.

Nev­er­the­less, some pan-African­ists have grown frus­trat­ed that the African con­ti­nent is being mis­rep­re­sent­ed because of this phe­nom­e­non. I refer to the peo­ple or groups con­cerned with Africa mis­in­for­ma­tion as Pan-African­ists because they believe in a real, authen­tic, vibrant, and pros­per­ous African con­ti­nent that is strong and can stand up for itself.

The dam­age that this pos­es to the rep­u­ta­tion of the African con­ti­nent is immense. It is the rea­son why these orga­ni­za­tions have formed to con­front and deal with this issue.

How to Fight Misinformation and Fake News

Today I am high­light­ing some of them in order to bring atten­tion to their work.

I must note that as I researched the sub­ject I did not find much. There are not many orga­ni­za­tions work­ing on this issue. Some of the orga­ni­za­tions I came across have been around for some time. Some, while not pop­u­lar, kept show­ing up, includ­ing Africa Check, Africa Is A Coun­try, Africa Media Ini­tia­tive, and Africa The Good News.

Mean­while, the moti­va­tions of these orga­ni­za­tions appear dif­fer­ent. While some were cre­at­ed pri­mar­i­ly for fact-check­ing pur­pos­es, oth­ers oper­at­ed not just as fact-check­ers but also as pub­lish­ers of orig­i­nal news. Plus, the orga­ni­za­tions dif­fered in the scope and size of operations.

Today I’ll high­light Africa Is A Coun­try and AfricaCheck.org.

Africa Is A Country

Africa Is A Coun­try, start­ed in 2009 by Sean Jacobs, now a pro­fes­sor of Inter­na­tion­al Affairs at the New School in New York City, appears satir­i­cal in its name, but is dri­ven through com­men­tary and analy­sis of events. The name of the site itself is meant to poke fun at the very idea that the African con­ti­nent, which boasts 54 coun­tries, is often con­sid­ered by those with lit­tle knowl­edge about its make­up, a coun­try instead of a continent.

With a huge fol­low­ing on Twit­ter and Face­book, the site fea­tures com­men­tary, opin­ions, and insight from writ­ers across the con­ti­nent. You can learn more about Africa Is A coun­try through its web­site.

AfricaCheck

Con­sid­ered the lead­ing Africa-based orga­ni­za­tion cham­pi­oning the fact-check­ing of African news and infor­ma­tion, Africa Check springs to the top when­ev­er fact-check­ing of Africa-relat­ed news and infor­ma­tion is men­tioned or talked about.

The com­men­da­tions for Africa Check are plen­ti­ful and can be found all over the inter­net. Africa Check is a jour­nal­is­tic enti­ty, which means what­ev­er they do is root­ed in the prin­ci­ples of journalism–fairness, accu­ra­cy, hon­esty, integri­ty, and the search for the truth.

In 2017 the Amer­i­can jour­nal­ism train­ing orga­ni­za­tion Poyn­ter Insti­tute not­ed that “In five years, Africa Check has become a leader in glob­al fact-checking.”

The orga­ni­za­tion has expe­ri­enced tremen­dous growth in its oper­a­tions and staff. Recent­ly it was the recip­i­ent of a $1,000,000 gift from the Omid­yar Network.