African Arguments

Top Menu

  • About Us
    • Our philosophy
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

Main Menu

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
    • Climate crisis
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • #EndSARS
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Podcast
    • Into Africa Podcast
    • Africa Science Focus Podcast
    • Think African Podcast
  • Debating Ideas
  • About Us
    • Our philosophy
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

logo

Header Banner

African Arguments

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
    • Climate crisis
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • #EndSARS
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Podcast
    • Into Africa Podcast
    • Africa Science Focus Podcast
    • Think African Podcast
  • Debating Ideas
SocietyTop storyWest
Home›African Arguments›Society›If blackouts don’t work, what might? Tackling fake news in West Africa

If blackouts don’t work, what might? Tackling fake news in West Africa

By Idayat Hassan & Jamie Hitchen
July 19, 2022
65
0
Share:
Fake news spreads quickly and easily from online to offline environments. Credit: KC Nwakalor for USAID/Digital Development Communications.

Disinformation is on the rise, and social media companies, governments, and fact-checking groups are all struggling to keep up.

Fake news spreads quickly and easily from online to offline environments. Credit: KC Nwakalor for USAID/Digital Development Communications.

Fake news spreads quickly and easily from online to offline environments. Credit: KC Nwakalor for USAID/Digital Development Communications.

Fake news may spread through social media and the internet, but it doesn’t stay there. It moves between online and offline environments with regularity and ease. A rumour started by an influencer on Facebook can become a topic of debate for television or radio talk shows. From there, it may be discussed in markets, atayah bases, okada stages or grins, disseminating through word of mouth. Completing the circle, these offline rumours can then return online, reinforcing the falsehood or skewing reality even further.

These links between online and offline networks are just one reason internet shutdowns are not a feasible solution to tackling West Africa’s fake news epidemic. In fact, the uncertainty sowed by blackouts can make rumours more widely believed.

This hasn’t stopped governments – such as Niger and Burkina Faso last year – shutting down the internet. In the last decade, people in 12 of the 15 member-states of the West African bloc ECOWAS have experienced some form of blackout, whether lasting for hours, days or even months. Governments typically cite the need stop disinformation spreading in order to protect national security, but the narratives they are concerned about stemming are, more often than not, ones that challenge the ruling party. Blackouts not only impinge on democratic rights and freedom of expression, but also have increasingly significant economic impacts, particularly for small and medium-scale businesses.

From moderation to legislation, what might work?

“Shutdowns hurt everyone and really don’t solve the problem,” argues David Akoji, special adviser to the Director General of Nigeria’s National Orientation Agency (NOA). He suggests that social media companies need to do more to engage governments and respond promptly to disinformation circulating on their platforms.

These companies are increasingly recognising the challenge but are struggling to keep up, especially in regions such as West Africa. Response rates to user reports of abuse are slow; platforms have limited capacity to moderate content in local languages; and moderators lack understanding of nuanced political issues in the region despite its growing user base. On average, 17% of West Africans had direct access to social media in 2021, yet countries like Benin and Cabo Verde do not even appear to be on social media companies’ radars when it comes to enforcing community standards, let alone tackling fake news.

“Platforms need to commit more resources to Africa,” says Rosemary Ajayi, founder of the Digital Africa Research Lab. “This would include setting up regional trust and safety units and expanding their indigenous content moderator workforce. They need to understand the disinformation ecosystems, take steps to penalise repeat offenders, and demonetise fake news”.

Another element of tackling fake news is public education. West African governments tend to focus their attention on more punitive approaches, but civic engagement is arguably the most critical tool in the fight. Almost all countries in the region have fact-checking initiatives run by media houses in partnership with civil society. These groups’ efforts are increasingly evolving to capture local languages and offline-online overlaps, but they still strain to keep up with the sheer volume of falsehoods, face accusations of political bias, and struggle to compete with the audiences of both online and offline influencers.

However, the benefits of fact-checking go beyond the ability to assess individual claims. The work of fact-checking initiatives can encourage people to think more critically about information they receive in general and provide them with tools to attempt to ascertain a claim’s truthfulness before sharing it. Nigeria’s NOA will soon run its seventh fact-checking course for government officials, security agencies and civil society groups. “When it comes to fighting fake news in Nigeria, public enlightenment, advocacy and sensitisation will go a very long way,” says Akoji.

A final strategy that states in West Africa have turned to in combating fake news is legislation and regulation. Burkina Faso, Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal, and The Gambia have all adapted or reinterpreted existing media codes to account for the rise of digital misinformation. Meanwhile, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Togo have passed new cybercrime or cybersecurity laws since 2015 that lay out punishments for sharing falsehoods – generally a combination of time in prison and/or a substantive fine.

According to Africa Check’s Samba Dialimpa Badji, these approaches – and therefore their effects – tend to be highly limited. “These are laws that put emphasis on repression without setting up mechanisms that contribute to limiting the circulation of falsehoods,” he says.

Questions also remain about their selective application and interpretation. In January 2020, Amnesty International reported that more than 17 journalists, bloggers and government critics had been prosecuted in less than two years under Benin’s revised digital code. Ajayi raises concerns that these laws are used to curtail citizens’ rights and also questions whether governments will apply the rules to themselves.

“It’s important to reiterate that across Africa, the government itself is responsible for funding, creating and disseminating disinformation,” she says.


 

Previous Article

The world of work can (and must) ...

Next Article

Chad’s transition to nowhere

0
Shares
  • 0
  • +
  • 0

Idayat Hassan & Jamie Hitchen

Idayat Hassan is the director of the Centre for Democracy and Development. Jamie Hitchen is the Centre for Democracy and Development’s editor-at-large and an honorary research fellow at the University of Birmingham.

Leave a reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  • Politics

    Criminology of Genocide: Breaking Paths

  • Politics

    Guy Scott and the “˜Caribbeanization’ of Zambia – Consequences for Zimbabwe? — by Brooks Marmon

  • NigeriaPolitics

    Nigeria’s once mighty PDP is fighting for its future

Subscribe to our newsletter

Click here to subscribe to our free weekly newsletter and never miss a thing!

  • 81.7K+
    Followers

Find us on Facebook

Interactive Elections Map

Keep up to date with all the African elections.

Recent Posts

  • Writing Piracy in Somalia: Who Controls the Narrative and How?
  • How useful is aid to Africa?
  • What to expect from the Africa Super League
  • Zimbabwe struggles to provide mental health support amid rising demand
  • Liberté, Egalité, Impunité

Editor’s Picks

Editor's PicksEthiopiaPoliticsSociety

Haacaaluu Hundeessaa Boonsaa: A legacy larger than death

A year after Haacaaluu’s assassination, I miss him. Oromia misses him. Ethiopia misses him. But his legacy of kindness and resistance lives on. Hundeessaa Bonsa and Gudatu Hora always knew ...
  • Scuffles in Sierra Leone's parliament. Credit: Sierra Leone Telegraph.

    Sierra Leone: Are brawls in parliament a sign of things to come?

    By Lucy James
    April 26, 2018
  • Typical coping strategies such as a nomadic lifestyle are inadequate to handle what is potentially the worst food crisis in Somalia's recent past. Credit: UNDP Somalia.

    Somalia faces worst humanitarian crisis in recent history

    By Mukesh Kapila
    June 23, 2022
  • Cameroon is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world and home to over 20 protected reserves, but this is being threatened by the Cameroon crisis. Credit: Ollivier Girard/CIFOR.

    Cameroon crisis threatens wildlife as thousands flee to protected areas

    By Amindeh Blaise Atabong
    July 12, 2018
  • Tunisia's President Kais Saied (left) meeting with the US Defence Secretary in September 2020. Credit: DoD/Lisa Ferdinando.

    Don’t let Tunisia’s democracy slip

    By Raed Ben Maaouia
    August 30, 2021

Brought to you by


Creative Commons

Creative Commons Licence
Articles on African Arguments are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
  • Cookies
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
  • en English
    am Amharicar Arabicny Chichewazh-CN Chinese (Simplified)en Englishfr Frenchde Germanha Hausait Italianpt Portuguesest Sesothosn Shonaes Spanishsw Swahilixh Xhosayo Yorubazu Zulu
© Copyright African Arguments 2020
By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies.
en English
am Amharicar Arabicny Chichewazh-CN Chinese (Simplified)en Englishfr Frenchde Germanha Hausait Italianpt Portuguesest Sesothosn Shonaes Spanishsw Swahilixh Xhosayo Yorubazu Zulu