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The image is of South Africans affected by the Covid-19 economic downturn in 2020 lining up to receive food parcels in Pretoria.
A Facebook post with an image purportedly of Kenyans queuing to receive relief food is FALSE.
“Dismay in Mt. Kenya as starving and angry locals endure shame to line up in long queues for the first time ever in history to receive relief food. Barely a month after UDA promised bountiful harvests from farms… [][][]” reads the post.
The Kenyan government has partnered with relief organisations to distribute food to those affected by food insecurity in different parts of the country. The situation has been occasioned by a combination of shocks, including a fourth successive below-average rainy season, localised resource-based conflict and high food prices as a result of the war in Ukraine and low in-country production.
A Google reverse image search, however, shows that the picture in question was taken in South Africa and not Kenya. The image was shared by Human Rights Watch on 20 May 2020.
The headline reads: “South Africa: End Bias in Covid-19 Food Aid”.
“People affected by the coronavirus economic downturn, line up to receive food donations at the Iterileng informal settlement near Laudium, southwest of Pretoria, South Africa,” the accompanying caption reads.
PesaCheck has looked into a Facebook post with an image purportedly of Kenyans queuing to receive relief food and finds it to be 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 organisations 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 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 Peris Gachahi and edited by PesaCheck Senior Copy Editor Cédrick Irakoze and acting chief copy editor Francis Mwaniki.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck managing editor Doreen Wainainah.
