Kenya’s freshly elected representatives are full of plans and promises. Nairobi governor Mike Sonko pledged to improve health standards, saying mothers and newborns have a higher chance of dying in childbirth in his county than a far flung rural one.
Celebrated girls’ rights campaigner Malala Yousafzai visited Nigeria where she called for a state of emergency on education. Does she get full marks for her claim that the country has the most out-of-school girls globally?
Emphasising the importance of a healthy breakfast, a margarine brand claimed that one in five South African children doesn’t eat one.
South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma highlighted the success of his administration’s HIV policies in parliament recently. Does official data back up his claim that fewer than 6,000 babies are born HIV+ every year?
Children as young as 2 in Kenya are having marijuana blown into their faces and ears as a supposed cure for measles. Does it work? Africa Check cleared the smoke.
A South African activist said in radio interview that a quarter of girls and 17% of boys would be sexually abused before their 18th birthday. This turned out to be an underestimate.
Great fact-checks puncture myths with rigour, but also in a way that reshapes the public debate by focusing on the true scale of a particular issue, argues our head of health and information service, Vinayak Bhardwaj. He presents his three “favourites” from 2016.
A picture of little Jake Amo drawing in his Ghanaian classroom has flooded the internet as a meme. Not everyone is amused, though.
A much circulated statistic claims that a child goes missing every 5 hours in South Africa but it is based on outdated data.
A number of small studies have been conducted in African countries on the effect of menstruation on girls’ school attendance. But the situation across the continent remains unknown.