On September 11, 2021, images showing a military officer and students in a classroom were shared on Twitter. According to this tweet, military officers were allegedly deployed to teach in Guinea after teachers supposedly abandoned the classroom.
Background
On September 5, 2021, Guinea witnessed a coup against former President Alpha Condé. The coup is reported to have been led by Col Mamady Doumbouya who took over the government as a transitional leader in less than a month. According to the New York Times is the fourth military take over in West Africa in 12 months, after Mali and Chad.
Verification
Reverse Image Searches show that these images were shared as early as September 10, 2021 via Honneur et Fidélité – Armée Camarounaise, an unofficial Twitter account of Cameroon’s army. According to this tweet, the Bataillon d’Intervention Rapide, (BIR) Cameroon’s military force had taken up teaching to make up for the lack of teachers.
Further, we compared sources that had BIR soldiers in army combat against the soldiers featured in these images. In these images, the helmets and military uniforms resemble those worn by BIR military officers. (See screengrab below).
Additionally, the official language used in Guinea is French while that in Cameroon is French and English. Therefore, French is the official language used in teaching in Guinea. While Cameroon uses both English and French in their curriculum. Now, with this information, using InVid’s magnifying lens, the language written on the blackboard is English. (See screengrab below).
Finally, according to an investigation documented by BBC Africa Eye on September 28, 2018 one of the weapons used by Cameroonian soldiers is a Zastava M21. This weapon can be seen carried by the officer in these images.
Verdict
NO, these images of army officers teaching were not taken in Guinea.
This story was produced by Africa Uncensored in partnership with Code for Africa with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie.
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