The FactChecker

Dubawa writers, fellows shortlisted for African Fact-Checking Awards

By Lateef Sanni

Some writers and fellows of West Africa independent verification platform, Dubawa, have been shortlisted as finalists for the 2021 African Fact-checking Awards.

In the Working Journalist category, Dubawa writers, Maxine Danso and Silas Jonathan, alongside Ghana’s Programme Officer, Caroline Anipah, were shortlisted for a collaborative fact check they entered for the fact-checking award.

In the fact check article, the writers analysed a video where it was claimed that the Ghanaian President was caught on tape accepting a bribe in 2017. The video was shared several times and continued to circulate at a time when the country’s presidential election was approaching. Their findings showed that the claim was false and the viral video was doctored.

Two other journalists affiliated to Dubawa were also shortlisted in the Working Journalist category.

Kunle Adebajo, a 2020 fellow, who works with HumAngle, was shortlisted for his fact-check on an alleged military raid of Boko Haram enclave. Elizabeth Ogunbamowo of SaharaReporters, a 2021 fellow, was shortlisted for her fact-check on the claim that Twitter does not recognise President Muhammadu Buhari.

The African Fact-checking Award, which is in its eighth year, is famous for annually appreciating and promoting fact-checking journalism in Africa. The organisers say the 2021 call received 216 entries from 28 countries, an increase from last year which recorded 192 entries from 27 African countries.

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#FakeNewsAlert

There’s precious little that we can do about the barrage of misinformation that we see daily, but there’s a lot we can do together if we learn to identify suspicious claims in the news and refrain from fuelling the fire by spreading them! Here are our top picks of likely-to-be-false news which [sadly] couldn’t be fact-checked.

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