As tech giants retreat, Africa’s fact-checkers are finding new ways to survive
As applause filled the hall at the Jardin Savana Hotel in Dakar, Senegal, Valdez Onanina stepped forward to hand certificates of distinguished service to three people who helped shape fact-checking in French-speaking West Africa: Peter Cunliffe-Jones, Assane Diagne and Samba Dialimpa Badji. For Valdez, who leads Africa Check’s francophone team, it was the most emotional moment of the two-day Africa Facts Summit. The dream of bringing the summit home to Senegal had finally come true.
I had come to speak about the future of fact-checking standards, but the story unfolding in Dakar was larger than that. The platforms that once sponsored fact-checking projects and previous Africa Facts Summits, including Google and Meta, were nowhere to be seen, just as they were absent from IFCN’s GlobalFact conference in Rio last June. Still, 162 participants from 35 countries filled the hotel’s conference hall, many covering their own travel to discuss how to keep the work alive. Against all odds, the field was proving resilient.
Related Knowledge Center: Fact-checking and its detractors
Fact-checking has become a familiar tool for political reporters to hold office-holders and candidates accountable. But critics ask if fact-checkers sometimes miss the forest for the trees, and if the practice often struggles with false equivalency the way conventional political coverage does.