The image of the Gambia Independence Stadium. Photo Source: Foroyaa.net
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Claim: A viral photo shows a young girl protesting to watch Gambia’s AFCON qualifiers at the Independence Stadium.
Verdict: Misleading! The minor’s image was taken from a photojournalist’s Facebook post and manipulated to push this narrative.
Full Text
Gamfoot Transfers, a popular Gambian football blogger, posted a photo of a young girl holding a placard as she protests to watch the upcoming Gambia’s Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) qualification game in Gambia’s national stadium.
Gamfoot Transfer made the post (archived here) on June 27, 2026 and wrote “Bless you, kid,” as the caption.
The blogger first made the post on Instagram, where it has generated 2,500 likes and 55 comments as of July 16, 2026.
The claim also appeared on the blog’s Facebook page, generating 1,100 likes, 43 comments, and 12 shares.
Other Facebook users shared this claim, as seen here, here, and here.
The Gambia’s national stadium, also known as “Independence Stadium,” has been under renovation since January 2023. As of June 2026, news reports confirmed that the renovation of the 40-year-old facility has not been fully completed or cleared for international matches.
This prolonged renovation has led to different controversies in recent times. An instance was when DUBAWA had to debunk a claim that Yankuba Minteh, Gambia’s famous footballer, had called for a boycott of Gambia’s national team until the Independence Stadium is completed.
DUBAWA conducted this verification due to the involvement of a minor.
Verification
We conducted a reverse image search and traced the original version of the photo to a Facebook post by a Gambian photojournalist named Pa Fatty Journalist.
Pa Fatty posted the photo on June 18, 2026, identifying the girl as Isatou Jallow.
According to the journalist, Isatou was a participant in a Primary Schools Inter-Regional Football Championship that took place in Jarra Soma, Lower River Region (LRR), the Gambia.
“Despite being the smallest player in the tournament, she impressed spectators with her brilliant skills, confidence and determination on the pitch,” he wrote.
Having found the original image, we ran the photo through AIorNOT and RockIMG to check for manipulation.
Both AI content detection tools showed signs of manipulation. AIorNOT showed a 47 per cent probability that the image was AI-generated and a five per cent probability that it was a deepfake.
RockIMG, however, puts AI-probability at 35 per cent and manipulation risk at 87 per cent.
Conclusion
Our findings show that the minor’s photo was taken from a photojournalist’s Facebook post and manipulated to push the narrative. The claim is therefore misleading.
This report was produced under the 2026 Kwame Karikari Fact-checking and OSINT Fellowship, co-hosted by DUBAWA and the Digital Technology, Artificial Intelligence, and Information Disorder Analysis Centre (DAIDAC), with support from the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID).
