This archived tweet contains four images showing the effects of drought. The tweet says Kenyan “President William Ruto should visit parts of the drought-stricken counties urgently to get a first-hand view of the famine emergency.”
Background
Some counties in Kenya are currently suffering the pangs of drought with most being in the Northern and Northeastern parts of Kenya with 10 counties listed as being in the red zone; implying that they are in the ‘alarm drought phase’. Over four million people are reported to be in dire need of relief food owing to the drought reported to be the worst in over four decades.
Reports in the media, for instance here, show images of carcasses of cattle starved to death against the backdrop of drought-stricken landscape with people’s concerted search for water. These sceneries are very much similar to the pictures captured in the tweet above.
Verification
While some parts of Kenya are reeling from drought the above pictures do not represent this case.
A reverse image search shows that the photo in the top left is from 2019 and was taken in Somalia. A caption in this Norwegian Report reads: ‘PRAYER: Mum Haalima Ahmed Farah with child Osman Mahammud Hussein prays for rain on a mountain outside Garowe in Puntland, Somalia, March 2019. All photos: Håvard Bjelland / Norwegian Church Aid (as translated from Norwegian)’. The same image is used in this article from the same publisher titled; ‘6.3 million Somalis face Christmas famine.’
The image of an emaciated camel first appeared online on March 14, 2022. It was posted by a Facebook account Cali Qani Xasan, as a comment to a post by Midnimo Web TV on Facebook, a Somalia-based online media website.
The Facebook post that Cali replies to quotes Abiy Ahmed, the Prime Minister of the Federal Republic of Ethiopia, who in part of his statement mentions “lack of water in the Somali region”
The image on the bottom right has been used in the context of Somalia here and here and in the context of Ethiopia here, with attribution to the Northern Tigray region.
Piga Firimbi reached out to Mohammed Dhaysane of Anadolu Agency, one of the publishers of an article with the image. He said that the image was acquired from file photos. We have established, through reverse image search, that the photo was taken by Hudaverdi Yaman of Anadolu Agency in Mooro Hagar Camp in Somalia on March 29, 2017. The photo is on Getty Images, an online images platform.
Piga Firimbi could however not establish the origin of the image of the well. Many visually similar images exist online from many sources and it is hard to pinpoint exactly where this particular one was taken.
Verdict
Three of the images in the post are used OUT OF CONTEXT and therefore MISLEADING.
This fact-check was produced by Africa Uncensored with support from Code for Africa’s PesaCheck, African Fact Checking Alliance network and the United Nations Development Programme.
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