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Recently, Togolese youth staged a protest demanding the resignation of President Faure Gnassingbe.
This follows his recent appointment as the President of the Council of Ministers, a role with no term limit.
This appointment sparked public debate and discontentment among Togolese, who perceive it as a lifetime service to a president who has ruled for over two decades.
The protest, which saw many youth blocking major roads with burning tyres, demanding government reforms and the resignation of the president, led to the killings and arrest of some protesters.
Before this, in early June, a similar protest was launched against an amendment to the country’s constitution and economic instability.
In recent times, some African countries have experienced swirls of protests and coup attempts due to their leaders’ overstaying in office, political instability, and worsening economic crisis.
Despite a ban on public demonstrations in Togo since 2022 following a deadly attack at Lome market, political instability and the deteriorating economic conditions, among others, pushed youths out to the streets in Togo.
As this protest intensified, some pages on Facebook disseminated false narratives to amplify the situation in Togo. However, some of these videos were unrelated and used to reinforce their narratives.
In line with DUBAWA’s mission of ensuring a misinformation-free media environment, we delved into some of this disinformation trend across social media platforms, particularly Facebook, which became a breeding ground for the diffusion of this falsehood.
Facebook, a fertile ground for misinformation
On Facebook, swirls of videos have fueled tension and a wave of information chaos as people engage with these posts, believing in their authenticity and veracity.
During the recent three-day protest from June 26 to 28 in Togo, a Facebook page belonging to a blog called “Borberber TV” shared not less than ten videos. While some were authentic, while others were sourced from a different event to spotlight the demonstration.
The blogger with over 167,000 followers, shared misleading and unrelated videos to amplify the demonstration. Meanwhile, DUBAWA noticed that during this protest, there was minimal media fact-checking coverage, which left many of the videos unchecked.
In one of its posts, the user uploaded a 32-second video on June 30, 2025, claiming it depicted an ongoing protest in Togo. The footage, which has accumulated over 316 likes as of July 24, 2025, features many protesters surrounding a junction with a burning tyre in flames, chanting and singing.
Having noticed the contention in the post’s comment section, DUBAWA analysed the footage using Google reverse image search. This verification led us to a similar video shared on TikTok here and here, linking it to a protest in Kenya.
Meanwhile, a manual video analysis revealed instances that reinforced the TikTok result. In the video, a banner with the inscription “The true Kenyan Flavour” can be seen.
Another signpost shows “MIBS College,” which stands for Meru Institute of Business Studies, a private college in Meru, Kenya.
Based on the above analysis, we discovered the video’s roots in Kenya, contradicting the blogger’s assertion.
During a similar period, Borberber TV shared another video of people running aimlessly in different directions as though escaping from an unseen danger.
We traced the clip to a similar video shared on Instagram on June 2, 2025, earlier than the Facebook post. The caption of the Instagram video, “Il Isanga, unaweza kukuta wanacheza kombolela,” translates as “Il Isanga, you can find them playing kombolela” using Google Translate.
Meanwhile, Il Isanga” Likely refers to “In Isanga. “When we looked up this location, we discovered that “In Isanga” refers to several locations in three African countries: Tanzania, Zambia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
DUBAWA also came across another video shared by the same user on June 30, 2025.
The video, which generated over 2,400 likes and 70 comments, sparked doubts among users who questioned the geographical accuracy of the event in the video.
Leveraging on this doubt, DUBAWA analysed the video clip and came across a similar video uploaded on YouTube on June 25, 2025. This video bears the exact date of the Kenya demonstrations commemorating the 2024 youth-led protest against tax rises.
Similarly, another Kenyan user on YouTube shared the same video, captioning the video as having originated from Kenya.
More misleading videos flood the space
Another user, “Papa Jay” on Facebook, shared an 11-minute, 40-second video claiming to be a massive protest in Togo. The clip, which was shared on June 28, 2025, was captioned, “The good people of Togo telling their president, who governed for over 20 years, to step down because enough is enough.”
While the post generated over 3,200 likes, 240 comments and 724 reposts as of Thursday, July 17, 2025, some users expressed doubt.
In the video, massive protesters are seen on the street, chanting and waving placards while being charged at by a group of people standing on the top of a three-story building.
DUBAWA investigated this and found a TikTok video shared around June 8, 2025, with the caption, “Just In: Maurice Kamto has sent word for his supporters to go back home. He has given them a rendezvous for tomorrow, 10 am.”
A similar video shared by “Papa Congossa” on Facebook on the same day as the TikTok page also captioned the video as being from Cameroon.
Maurice Kamto is a prominent Cameroonian lawyer, opposition politician, and leader of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM), a strong opposition party in Cameroon.
Meanwhile, media reports here and here covered a police clash with supporters of opposition leader Maurice Kamto in Douala amid the country’s high-stakes presidential election.
Further strengthening the narrative, a Facebook user from Ghana, “Jerry Kwabena”, as seen in his bio, shared a 17-second video showing protesters being dispersed by water cannons. The caption reads: “Resisting oppressors’ rule. More videos from Togo”.
As of Thursday, July 17, 2025, the post had 106 likes and 11 reposts from Facebook users.
DUBAWA checked and discovered the same video was shared on YouTube with a narration that it happened in Kenya. A report by Al Jazeera also confirmed the video’s provenance to Kenya.
Yet, in another video shared by “Emegwara Donald” in June 2025, the caption reads, “Togo Security Are Not Finding It Funny on These Protesters This Early Morning.”
To trace the original video, DUBAWA came across a report by AFRIKANA TV on YouTube. AFRIKANA TV reported the Kenyan protest with excerpts from the claimant’s video.
A TikTok account “@WothayaKenya1” also shared the same video on June 25, 2025, with the caption, “current situation in Allsops, (an area along Thika road in Nairobi, Kenya).”
Meanwhile, we found similar videos tracing the footage’s provenance to Kenya here, here, here and here.
Analysing the video from the looks, we discovered that the design of the road, infrastructure, and traffic regulation at the center resembles the popular Thika road and highway in Nairobi, Kenya.
During the investigation, DUBAWA noticed that most users engaging with the alleged videos of the Togo protest reside in Ghana, including the Facebook blogger, as contained in their bio.
Most videos that flooded Facebook during the Togo protest were from the demonstration in Kenya because the Kenyan protest timeline was close to that of Togo, which made it easy for misinformation to spread.
Political longevity fueling protests in Africa
Over the years, Africa has suffered long-standing hardship and corruption from most of its political leaders. This, among other economic conditions, is driving African citizens to unlawful actions and demonstrations.
Just like the situation of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, where military officials forcefully overpowered the government, a growing trend is silently moving across other African countries, agitating similar happenings in their various countries.
In May, DUBAWA analysed how some pages carefully orchestrated a coup in the Ivory Coast that never happened.
As this pattern continues to grow unnoticed, the overstay in power and manipulation of the constitution for personal gains by some African leaders remain one of the primary reasons behind successful coups.
Despite practising Democracy, many African nations fail to uphold their practice and principles as actions are carried out without considering the democratic provisions contained in the constitution.
African countries now breathe the air of authoritarianism as democracy has steadily declined in practice, with the constitution becoming flexible for changes that favour the elites. Not just the political sector, but most African nations are experiencing serious financial crises due to government reforms or negligence regarding the people’s necessities and survival.
