Is This Facebook Account With the Name of Kenya’s First Lady and Offering Loans Legitimate?

By Simon Muli

A Facebook account purports to belong to Kenya’s First Lady, Margaret Kenyatta, and offers loans in her name.

The account is registered as “Margaret Kenyatta Loan Apps”, and contains a number of posts, including one which invites users to apply for loans of between Ksh 10,000 and Ksh 250,000. The post adds that the loans will accrue an interest rate of six per cent.

However, the procedure to obtain the loans includes paying a processing fee of Ksh 399 to a provided phone number. The post identifies the owner of the telephone number as Mrs Abraham, a ‘secretary’.

To access the loans requires that a prospective borrower sends a text, indicating the amount of money they require, their identification number, and county of residence. Once this is done, the post asks the user to wait only seven minutes for the loan to be processed.

Verification

There is no information about the loans on the legitimate Facebook and Twitter accounts of the first lady from which she normally engages the public.

Additionally, the first lady’s legitimate Facebook handle is a page and not a personal account, as is the case with the handle that posted the claim we are debunking.

The username of the impostor account is “Margaret Kenyatta Loan Apps”, and it has an image of the first lady as the display photo, while the display image is a graphic containing the words “Instant Loans”.

On the other hand, Ms Kenyatta’s legitimate Facebook page bears the username “Office of the First Lady Kenya”. It has 267,601 likes and 284, 362 followers. Its display image is a photo of the first lady in sports gear, and below it, a logo of her flagship initiative to improve maternal and child care in Kenya, dubbed Beyond Zero.

The cover image is a photo of Ms Kenyatta wearing an apron and interacting with babies. Under the ‘About’ section of the page, there are links to the first lady’s Twitter account as well as the official State House website.

Kanze Dena Mararo, the State House spokesperson, in a text to PesaCheck disowned the account with the claim, terming it as fake.

Verdict

PesaCheck has looked into a Facebook account purporting to be that of Kenya’s First Lady, Margaret Kenyatta, and offering loans in her name and finds it to be a HOAX.

This story was produced by Africa Uncensored in partnership with Code for Africa with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie.