Back to Africa Check

Tanzanian president Suluhu at Kenyan deputy president Ruto’s office during 2021 state visit? No, photo snapped at 2019 summit in Uganda

Tanzanian president Samia Suluhu visited Kenyan deputy president William Ruto during her recent trip to Nairobi, claims the caption of a photo posted on Facebook on 5 May 2021. 

“Pale Karen , ofisi ya DP Ruto : HE 5th President of Kenya , Dr William Ruto meets with Tanzania's president , Suluhu,” it reads in a mix of Kiswahili and English.

This roughly translates as: “At Karen, the office of deputy president Ruto: his excellency the fifth president of Kenya, Dr William Ruto meets with Tanzania’s president, Suluhu.”

The photo shows Suluhu holding a sculpture next to a smiling Ruto. He remains deputy president, but is likely to run for the presidency in Kenya’s 2022 elections.

Suluhu arrived in Kenya on 4 May for a two-day state visit, during which she addressed a joint sitting of parliament. Suluhu and her host, Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta, held bilateral talks in a bid to strengthen relations between the two countries.

But does the photo show Suluhu visiting Ruto’s office in Karen, a suburb of Kenya’s capital of Nairobi, in 2021? We checked.

Karen_False

Africa Now Conference 2019

A Google reverse image search reveals that the photo first surfaced online on 13 March 2019 when Ruto shared it on his official Twitter account.

Ruto posted a series of photos and captioned them: “During a meeting with Tanzania Vice president Samia Suluhu in Kampala, Uganda. #AfricaNow19.”

 

 

The photos were taken during the 2019 Africa Now Conference in Uganda, which was attended by leaders from across the continent.

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.