As the number of confirmed coronavirus cases across Africa passed the one million mark this week, we’ve looked into some of the widely shared fake news about the pandemic on the continent.
Claim: Ghana’s president has endorsed a conspiracy theory video
Verdict: False
A voice recording endorsing various false conspiracies about the coronavirus pandemic has been attributed to the President of Ghana. We aren’t sure who’s speaking. It is a West African accent, but it is definitely not President Nana Akufo-Addo.
Ghana’s Information Minister has confirmed that the voice was not the president’s and said the claim was “obviously false”.
The message makes various unsubstantiated claims about the origins of the virus, including the widely-shared false notion that the pandemic was a planned event, a so-called ‘plandemic’.
It also features false claims about mandatory vaccinations and the involvement of Bill Gates in manipulating events.
We’ve previously written in detail about these compulsory vaccine rumours and the ‘plandemic’ conspiracy theory.
Different versions of the clip have been circulated in Europe, North America and Africa.
One, posted on a Nigerian YouTube channel, has clocked up more than 400,000 views.
The man who runs the channel says he changed the title of the video to “Africa Leader…Exposes Bill Gates Deadly Vaccine For Africa” after people in the comments pointed out it inaccurately named the Ghanaian president.
However, Nana Akufo-Addo’s photograph is still showing.
