FALSE: This video of a collapsed school was filmed in DRC, not Uganda
The footage was filmed in Tshumbe, Sankuru, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)
This video on X (formerly Twitter) claiming to show a school structure that collapsed, trapping learners in Tororo, Uganda, is FALSE.
The 58-second clip depicts several people, most likely students, being rescued from the debris of a collapsed structure. The author claims the collapsed building is a classroom in Tororo, eastern Uganda.
The video has been shared on Facebook here and here with the same claim.
The video was, however, not filmed in Tororo.
In the comments on the video, a user noted that the footage was first circulated online on 14 January 2024. The incident is attributed to the collapse of a school in which children were trapped. The incident happened at Tshumbe in Sankuru, DRC.
Our fact-checker identified the language spoken in the video as ‘Kikongo’, not Jopadhola, which is commonly spoken in Tororo, Uganda.
A further Google keyword search of the incident led to several leads here and here, indicating that the video has been online in the past. The locality is in DRC, not Uganda.
DRC media reports showed that the tragedy occurred on 13 January 2023 at Mutshilua Primary School of the 28th CMUCC in the centre of Tshumbe.
PesaCheck has looked into a video on X (formerly Twitter) purportedly of a school that collapsed, trapping several students in Tororo and finds it to be FALSE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Pius Enywaru and edited by PesaCheck senior copy editor Cédrick Irakoze and acting chief copy editor Francis Mwaniki.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck’s managing editor Doreen Wainainah.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.
