Syndicated story by PesaCheck.

A website link claiming that Jumia, an online marketplace, is giving away a phone as it celebrates its 20th anniversary is FALSE.

The website requires visitors to fill out a questionnaire to stand a chance of winning a Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro 8/ 128 GB phone. The questionnaire asks users to provide information on their knowledge of the company, gender and address.

Applicants are requested to pick from a selection of gift boxes to win the phone. After selecting a box, they receive a congratulatory message with instructions to share the message with five WhatsApp groups or 20 friends to receive their gift within five to seven days.

However, a review of Jumia’s official website does not provide any information about the giveaway. Instead, the company, which has a presence in several African countries, has discounts on various products, including phones, in celebration of Jumia Nigeria’s ninth anniversary.

The retailer launched operations in four African countries in 2012, but with exception of Nigeria, neither Egypt, Morocco nor South Africa seem to be running a similar promotion in celebration of their anniversary. Moreover, since the company was established in 2012, it cannot be celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2021.

WhoIs search results reveal the fake website promoting the giveaway was registered on 5 May 2021 in Arizona, USA.

On the other hand, the legitimate Jumia Nigeria website was registered on 26 June 2012, in Lagos, Nigeria.

PesaCheck has looked into a website link claiming that Jumia is giving away a phone in celebration of its 20th anniversary, and finds it to be a FALSE.

This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.

By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organizations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.

Have you spotted what you think is fake news or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.

This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Najma Juma and edited by chief copy editor Rose Lukalo. The article was approved for publication by managing editor Enock Nyariki.

PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water/sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.

PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organizations.