By Angie Drobnic Holan
It wasn’t long ago that fact-checkers in Poland noticed a surge of online misinformation about Africa — anti-science claims about vaccines, anticolonialist claims involving Russia and anti-immigrant claims about refugees. The Polish Ministry for Foreign Affairs noticed it, too, and sought to fund independent journalism projects to do some debunking and fact-checking.
The result was a project called “TruthAfrica,” fact checks for Polish and European audiences about what was actually happening in countries like Nigeria, Algeria, Angola, Chad, Egypt, Uganda and Zambia.
But the fact-checkers in Poland who work at Pravda (“Truth”) realized they couldn’t do this work alone. They reached out to other fact-checkers in Africa who are part of the International Fact-Checking Network and found a partner in Code for Africa, a group that runs the fact-checking project PesaCheck and is also home to the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism network.
The project website says the TruthAfrica project is intended “to serve as a bridge between African and European audiences, highlighting how global narratives influence local realities and fostering collaboration to uphold democratic values and social integrity.”
As director of the IFCN, I interviewed the team at TruthAfrica to find out how this unique collaboration came about and how the work is going three months after its launch.
Angie Drobnic Holan: How did this project get off the ground? The connection between Poland and Africa is a bit surprising to those of us outside of the area.
Justin Arenstein, CEO and editor-in-chief of Code for Africa: Nowhere is an island, anymore. In the digital world, ideas from a world away shape local realities and decision-making. So, the war in Ukraine, discussions around immigration and nationalism across Europe, and even the role of the former Soviet Union in liberating Africa all play an outsized role on public opinions and policymaking in Africa. African zeitgeist, in turn, shapes how our countries vote in the UN and who they ally with economically or politically.
Jakub Śliż, President of Pravda: The idea for this project came from our search for meaningful work. In Poland, we saw how disinformation in Africa impacts not just the region but also Europe.
For example, narratives pushed by Russian state-affiliated media and local proxies in Africa often serve to undermine Western institutions, including the European Union and NATO, while simultaneously reinforcing narratives that paint Russia as a reliable partner. These narratives do not remain confined to Africa — they make their way back to European discourse, influencing debates on foreign policy, migration and security.
Take the case of Wagner Group’s (now Africa Corps) influence campaigns in the Sahel. These campaigns positioned Russia as a defender of African sovereignty while portraying European missions, such as the French-led Operation Barkhane, as neo-colonial projects. This rhetoric resonated not only in African capitals but also in European political discussions, where it fueled anti-immigration sentiments and skepticism toward international engagement in Africa.
Similarly, false narratives about Ukrainian grain exports — such as claims that Ukraine is depriving Africa of food while Europe hoards resources — have been widely circulated in African media. These narratives have been used in Europe to justify anti-Ukraine positions, complicating diplomatic efforts and economic policies.
Partnering with Code for Africa allowed us to strengthen resilience while broadening our understanding of the global information landscape.
We also aimed to bridge their technical expertise with our fact-checking and storytelling approach. To refine this, we brought in Eva Vajda, a senior investigative journalist, to enhance our investigative capabilities.
Holan: This project focuses strongly on investigating harmful narratives. How do you decide which narratives to focus on?
Eva Vajda, senior editor of the TruthAfrica project: Our target audience is the European audience, who in general have very little knowledge of what is happening in Africa, especially in the Eastern part of the continent. Therefore, we tried to choose familiar topics that might resonate with them and they can identify themselves with them, e.g., narratives about COVID or the Russian-Ukrainian war.
Holan: Tell us a bit about one or two stories that you’ve found particularly compelling so far.
Vajda: One of the most interesting stories for me was a COVID narrative in Nigeria claiming that the virus was a divine punishment, sent by God as a sign of the end times or as retribution for political corruption. Religious leaders played a key role in spreading such narratives, framing vaccines as incompatible with faith and fueling public distrust in health initiatives. This was particularly significant in a country where clerics hold more influence than government institutions for many people. The other compelling narrative was how Sudanese refugees are responsible for the cost of living crisis in Egypt. It seems it is a very universal human being behaviour that people blame others — the foreigners or those who are different from us — for economic hardship.
Holan: What kind of techniques are you using from the partner organizations to do the work?
Śliż: We rely heavily on local expertise — that’s key to accurate and impactful reporting. Our partners on the ground, thanks to Code for Africa, provide essential context, helping us avoid a European-centric perspective and ensuring our work truly reflects regional realities. Beyond that, we take a broad approach to tackling disinformation, leveraging established fact-checking methodologies and adhering to the Code of Principles. At the same time, we view disinformation through the lens of the DISARM framework, which helps us understand the tactics and motivations behind influence operations. Additionally, we incorporate analytical frameworks that allow us to track narratives over time, assess their impact, and refine our strategies for countering them effectively.
Holan: This project aims to engage the public beyond passively reading text stories. Tell us a bit about those engagement efforts.
Śliż: We want the public to engage beyond just reading. Our focus is on impact — once a story is published, our work continues. We reach out to embassies, NGOs (nongovernmental organizations), and activists to amplify findings, spark discussions, and drive change. It’s often hard because writing and researching take a lot of time, but we see exponential value in reaching out and establishing connections with different organizations’ bodies.
Holan: Which languages are you publishing in? And how do you think about navigating the language differences across and between Europe and Africa?
Śliż: We are publishing in English and Polish, but the research process is far more complex. Each country we are analyzing has its own unique linguistic landscape, and while knowledge of French or Portuguese might be sufficient in former colonial territories to grasp the broader disinformation trends, fully understanding the local information ecosystem often requires familiarity with regional dialects. For instance, while Arabic is the official language in both Algeria and Tunisia, variations in dialect and usage can make research significantly more challenging. That’s why we rely on local journalists and fact-checkers who have the linguistic and cultural expertise needed to accurately interpret and verify information.
Holan: What topics do you expect to address in the future? How do you think this project will develop over the next year?
Śliż: I firmly believe that in the coming year, we will be able to better showcase and highlight the importance of analyzing the real-world impact of disinformation from an African perspective. Too often, narratives originating from or spreading within Africa are overlooked in global discussions, despite the continent increasingly becoming a key battleground for influence operations and foreign information manipulation. I think this project could spark a discussion and potentially initiate change. We want to continue this effort by finding a sustainable way to maintain it. We believe that investigative journalism grounded in fact-checking methodology could provide an interesting angle that we plan to explore always in collaboration with local partners and African NGOs.
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