Desinfox Networking

Democratic governance Environment Gender equality Misinformation The French-speaking world

Launched in 2024, Desinfox Networking has supported the African Platform of French-speaking fact-checkers (PAFF), a network of the main fact-checking media outlets in French-speaking Sub-Saharan Africa. The nine members benefitted from workshops on digital communication tools, investigative techniques in open-source intelligence (OSINT) and editorial planning of collaborative investigation into information manipulation across Africa.

“Thanks to this training, I was able to improve my skills in various important subjects, such as OSINT and digital journalism. Fruitful discussion, led by qualified experts, helped us acquire practical tools to improve our everyday work in our organisations.”
Britney Line Ngalingbo, Executive Director for Centrafrique Check, member of PAFF

The project backed Factoscope.fr, a digital tool created by the state school of journalism in Tours to lead a community of French-speaking African journalists committed to pushing back against misinformation. It also paved the way for 34 fact-checkers from French-speaking Africa to take part in the 2024 Africa Fact Summit in Accra (Ghana) and add key issues to the Summit agenda, such as Russian disinformation strategies in the Sahel region. In 2024, a French-speaking journalist (Adnan Salif Sidibe from Faso Check) won the award for the first time for the best article in the “professional fact-checkers” category.

Setup of REFEMI and digital innovation

Desinfox Networking helped set up the French-speaking network for media information and literacy (REFEMI) – an initiative involving six MIL organisations in Europe, North America and Africa – by providing the funds for the three African members (from Eduk-Média, Polaris Asso and Les bénévoles de l’EMI) to participate in the 19^th Francophonie summit, where the network was formally set up.

Lastly, a feasibility study for the use of the “CrossOver” scheme in several countries in French-speaking Africa was launched. CrossOver was created by the Finnish startup Check First to monitor, investigate and highlight the spread of doubtful content on social networks and search engines (especially YouTube, X, Reddit, Google News, Instagram, Mastodon, TikTok, the Bing search engine and Duck Duck Go). The results of the study were presented to the nine media outlets belonging to the PAFF to see whether they wished to experiment with the tool in their respective countries.

“REFEMI is crucial to shaping Media Information and Literacy (MIL) in French-speaking countries. Thanks to this network, we can conduct research, strengthen advocacy for more suitable public policies and develop a pool of trainers who are more alert and effective than ever.”
Ousseynou Gueye, founder & Executive Director of Polaris Asso (Senegal)