By Michael Barnabe.
The picture circulating in social media with a caption ‘’ Somebody was MP for this place for more than 20yrs…He is now promising the unemployed 6k per month…’’ Is not from Kenya.
A poster in form of a meme has been doing rounds on social media, especially WhatsApp status purporting to have been taken in Kenya. The meme is showing a home stead sounded by poor environment and sanitation.
Many of social media users have associated the picture with Kibra residence, this is a trap of using unverified picture has trapped even public figures and politicians, using it online comments and posts.
The latest account to post this picture was, one associated to former Machakos senator Johnston Muthama.
In the tweet posted on 16th October 2021 at 11.51am, Muthama is noted blaming former Langata Member of parliament and current ODM leader Raila Oding to have failed to uplift residents lives when he was the MP.
Kenyans went on to add oil into the fire, by criticizing Raila Odinga for the same.
Mtaani radio fact-check desk was curious and established investigation to verify the credibility of the said Kibra photo.
From our research we can establish that this photo was first used in a research project by Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia (CIDRZ) in collaboration with LSHTM,
This study used the Behavior Centered Design methodology, and a cluster randomized controlled trial that was to evaluate the intervention.
The study’s primary outcome was to be the proportion of households that improve their motivation to acquire an improved toilet within 6 months of the intervention. The secondary outcome was to be the proportion of households that upgrade their latrines from ‘unimproved’ to ‘improved’ toilet.
This project took place between the year 2015 to 2018 in Zambia and not Kenya.
This story was produced by Michael Barnabe at Mtaani newsroom in partnership with Code for Africa’s iLAB data journalism program me, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie’.’