Was This Video Taken During the Recent Protests in Somalia?

This video shared as a tweet went up the internet on April 16, 2021, claiming to be of a protest in Mogadishu.

Another video from tonight's protest in Mogadishu pic.twitter.com/UFu43bLZyL

— Mohammed Dhaysane (@MDhaaysane) April 16, 2021

Background

Somalia’s president Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo was elected on February 8, 2017, in a tightly guarded airport complex. His term ended on February 8, 2021. However, the lower house of parliament voted to extend his term by two years. The United Nation’s Security Council members and Somalia’s prime minister Mohamed Hussein Roble rejected this extension. On April 28, 2021, president Farmaajo bowed to this pressure and dropped the bid to extend his term.

Verification

When running a reverse image search, there was no much information available as the keyframes retrieved from this video did not lead to any specific site where this video was first uploaded.

However, replies to this tweet show a screenshot from a post on Facebook believed to be the source of the video. To verify if this video was posted from this account, we used an advance search on this account. We focused on these keywords; ‘share garee Kacdoon shacabka Soomaaliyeed’  within this specific account. Results show that this account, Abdihaliim Bangar, posted the same video on February 8, 2017. This was during a celebration of the newly elected president, Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo.

The same video was reposted by the same account in April 17, 2021. The owner of this Facebook account took credit for taking the video and posting it on the night of February 8, 2017.

This same video was posted on February 9, 2017, by another account with the same keywords, ‘share garee Kacdoon shacabka Soomaaliyeed’  which is translated as ‘share this revolution of the Somali people’.

Verdict

This video was not taken during a protest in Mogadishu on April 16, 2021, but during a celebration of the newly elected president Abdullahi Farmaajo Mohamed on February 8, 2017. These claims are therefore MISLEADING.

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