Social media platform, Facebook, in partnership with Africa Check, has added new local language support for several African languages to fortify its third-party fact-checking programme.
The initiative helps to assess the accuracy of news on the platform, thereby reducing the spread of fake news.
Launched in 2018 across five countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, including South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and Cameroun, Facebook entered into the collaboration with the continent’s first independent fact-checking organisation to expand its local language coverage across Nigeria in Yoruba and Igbo in addition to Hausa; Swahili in Kenya; Wolof in Senegal and Afrikaans, Zulu, Setswana, Sotho, Northern Sotho and Southern Ndebele in South Africa.
The company made the announcement yesterday in Johannesburg, the commercial capital of South Africa. Read more