A tweet published on April 4, 2023 claims to show the recent impact of floods in Kenya’s Northern region. This image was also recently published on a more popular Twitter account- Soko Analyst– in a tweet published on April 2, 2023 with over 190 retweets.
Background
Northern Kenya regions have indeed recently been experiencing fatal floods since March 2023. In a report by Citizen TV, the floods were predicted to last from the month of March to May, and have already led to the loss of lives, livelihood and displacements. A more recent report published by the USAID on April 15, 2023 indicates that the floods have hit countries in the Horn of Africa, including Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya. This report states that the floods in Kenya have led to 21 deaths and affected 19 counties.
Amid this crisis are fallacies emanating from the misuse of unrelated images to supposedly show the impact of the floods. Piga Firimbi for instance debunked a TikTok post, originally of a video from floods in Mexico in 2020, used to falsely illustrate the impact of the ongoing floods in Northern Kenya. This claim was debunked Here.
Verification
A reverse image search of the image shared on the Soko Analyst account reveals that it was earliest published online in 2018. Most notably in a tweet on the Kenyan Traffic account published on April 18, 2018. The tweet indicates that the image showed the situation along Garissa-Mandera road. This image was further shared on Twitter in 2018 here, here and here.
Verdict
The tweets claiming to illustrate the impact of ongoing floods in Northern Kenya are MISLEADING.
This fact-check was produced by Africa Uncensored with support from Code for Africa’s PesaCheck, the International Fact-Checking Network, and the African Fact-Checking Alliance network.
Add comment