FALSE: Image Claimed to Show a Highway in Rongo Town Is Actually from Dar es Salaam

This post on X (archived here) claims that the image shown is of Rongo town at night. The image shows a well-lit highway with traffic at night.

Background

Rongo Town is a town in Migori County, Kenya. It is located about 40 km south of Kisii Town and about 20 km north of Migori Town. The town is located along the Kisii-Sirare highway that links Kenya to Tanzania through Sirare. In 2016, the government embarked on a project to rehabilitate the Kisii-Sirare-Ahero Highway in the Kenya Southern Corridor that passes through Rongo town.

Verification

A reverse image search of the image gives multiple results with the image on different sites, mostly social media posts. The posts suggest that the image is of the Ubungo interchange in Dar-es-Salaam Tanzania, for instance here on Facebook and here

The earliest this image was posted on Instagram on December 16, 2021. The post on “My Dar es Salaam” Facebook group attributes the photo to the Instagram post.

An aerial view of of the interchange on Google Earth shows similar features as depicted in another image (wide angle) of Ubungo interchange Piga Firimbi found online. 

Courtesy: Google Earth

Verdict

The claim that the image in the post is of Rongo town is FALSE.

This fact check was published by Piga Firimbi with support from Code for Africa’s PesaCheck and African Fact-Checking Alliance.

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