Back to Africa Check

Kenya’s Raila Odinga ‘yielding to the wheelbarrow’? No, image doctored

A photo shared on a Facebook group with more than 1 million members seems to show Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga holding a wheelbarrow hoisted up in the air by dozens of hands.

It was posted on 2 March 2021 by two different users.

“Still heavy reception of Odinga in Voi. Mzee ametii wheelbarrow,” one captioned it. The Kiswahili translates as: “The old man has yielded to the wheelbarrow.”

“Raila welcomed in Voi with a wheelbarrow,” another wrote.

Voi is the largest town in Taita-Taveta county in southeastern Kenya. Odinga started a tour of the county on 1 March.

The wheelbarrow is the symbol of the United Democratic Alliance, a political party associated with the country’s deputy president William Ruto. Ruto has donated wheelbarrows to young people as a sign of his commitment to economic empowerment. Odinga, the leader of the Orange Democratic Movement, has criticised the donations as “tokenism”.

But does the photo show Odinga “yielding” to the wheelbarrow in Voi? We checked. 

Odinga_False

Photo manipulated, context falsified

A reverse image search reveals that the photo has been doctored. The original in fact shows Ruto receiving a wheelbarrow at Kaiyaba grounds in Nyeri County in the central region of Kenya on 31 October 2020. It was republished by Nation Africa on 19 January 2021.

Odinga’s face has been edited onto Ruto’s face, and the context falsified to coincide with Odinga’s visit to Voi.

Republish our content for free

Please complete this form to receive the HTML sharing code.

For publishers: what to do if your post is rated false

A fact-checker has rated your Facebook or Instagram post as “false”, “altered”, “partly false” or “missing context”. This could have serious consequences. What do you do?

Click on our guide for the steps you should follow.

Publishers guide

Africa Check teams up with Facebook

Africa Check is a partner in Meta's third-party fact-checking programme to help stop the spread of false information on social media.

The content we rate as “false” will be downgraded on Facebook and Instagram. This means fewer people will see it.

You can also help identify false information on Facebook. This guide explains how.

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
limit: 600 characters

Want to keep reading our fact-checks?

We will never charge you for verified, reliable information. Help us keep it that way by supporting our work.

Become a newsletter subscriber

Support independent fact-checking in Africa.