By Simon Muli
A video shared on TikTok claiming to show President William Ruto promising Kenyans “electric clouds” is ALTERED.
The video shows President Ruto making a statement with the audio repeating the claim we are fact-checking.
“Kwanza tunatengeneza mawingu ya stima… kwa msimu wa mvua, sisi tunafinya switch mvua inanyesha. Tunafinya switch nyengine, jua inawaka chakula inakua. And that is the way to go for us to finish the hunger that we are facing as a country. Na ikiendelea vizuri tutaangalia vile tutatengeneza mitaro ya stima ndio kukinyesha inafunguka,” the audio says.
The audio can be loosely translated thus; “We will create electric clouds so that during the rainy season, we just switch the rain on. We will also be able to switch the sun on to enable crops to grow…. If this goes well, we will also create an electric drainage system to function during the rainy season.”
The video has also been shared on YouTube.
Interestingly, the President’s lip movements do not align with the audio content he is purported to be speaking.
PesaCheck captured a screenshot of one of the video frames and performed a reverse image search through Google Lens. One of the search results led us to a video uploaded on YouTube by Citizen TV on 14 May 2023.
President Ruto’s attire, as well as the surrounding environment in the video, matches the one we are fact-checking.
The description accompanying the video from Citizen TV states that it was filmed at State House Nairobi during a televised interview with the President and invited journalists.
The longer version of the video has been posted elsewhere online, including by NTV Kenya.
A review of the interview shows President Ruto made no remarks about creating electric clouds or drainage systems.
The audio in the video we are fact-checking also appears to be more of a mimic of the President’s voice by an actor rather than his actual voice.
This indicates that the audio was altered to include the voice actor’s audio.
PesaCheck has examined the video claiming to show President William Ruto promising Kenyans “electric clouds” and found it to be ALTERED.
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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