PARTLY FALSE: US did not announce direct delivery of humanitarian aid from Washington to Tigray
Samantha Power, the USAID administrator, stated that the food aid in the Tigray region has been depleted but did not announce direct delivery to Mekelle.
A Facebook post claiming the United States government has announced that it will airlift humanitarian aid directly from Washington DC to the war-torn Tigray region in Ethiopia, following the depletion of food aid in the region, is PARTLY FALSE.
According to the post, Samantha Power, the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), made the announcement.
“Breaking news: following the depletion of food aid in Tigray region, the US government announced that it will send humanitarian aid air services directly from Washington to Mekelle [capital of Tigray region],” the post in Amharic reads.
On 19 August 2021, Power warned that USAID and other aid groups “have depleted their stores of food items warehoused in Tigray”, for the first time in nine months of the conflict.
The administrator also said the Ethiopian government has obstructed humanitarian aid and free movement in the Tigray region and asked Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s administration to allow the swift aid movement.
The claim was shared on Facebook following Power’s statement.
PesaCheck has reviewed the aforementioned press release and found that, although the statement said that food aid in the Tigray region has been depleted, it did not mention that aid will be airlifted from Washington straight to Mekelle.
Moreover, there are no news reports about the US announcement of delivery of humanitarian aid directly to Mekelle using air service.
PesaCheck has investigated a Facebook post claiming the US announced to deliver humanitarian aid directly to Mekelle using air service following the depletion of food aid in the region and finds it to be PARTLY 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 news 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 Tolera Gemta and edited by PesaCheck deputy editor Eden Berhane, and chief copy editor Rose Lukalo. The article was approved for publication by managing editor Enock Nyariki
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.
