SATIRE: Uganda Government is not recruiting energetic men to encourage citizens to smile at NAM delegates
This post on X (formerly Twitter) claiming that the Ugandan Government is recruiting energetic men to encourage citizens to smile at delegates attending the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit is a parody.
The post features the image of Chris Baryomunsi, Uganda’s ICT minister.
“GIG ALERT! The Ministry of TCI & National Happiness is seeking to recruit 1000 energitic (sic) young men who can move with megaphones (Mukalakasa) along Summit routes encouraging citizens to forget their problems and smile for visitors. Being a comedian is an added advantage. The budget is this big!” the post reads.
Uganda has no ministry called TCI & National Happiness. The ministerial docket Baryomunsi heads is the Ministry of ICT and National Guidance.
Baryomunsi told the media ahead of the Non- Aligned Movement (NAM) summit that kicked off on 15 January that Ugandans should smile for the delegates. The minister’s remarks have since gone viral, as seen here, here, here and here. However, the government is not hiring individuals to encourage people to smile.
We contacted Baryomunsi who dismissed the purported hiring as untrue.
“That’s a joke. My message to Ugandans was clear but it’s being blown out of proportion. We are not hiring,” the minister responded to our query by phone.
PesaCheck looked into a post on X (formerly Twitter) featuring an image of Uganda’s ICT minister Chris Baryomunsi and purporting that the ministry is recruiting energetic men to encourage citizens to smile at NAM delegates and found it to be satirical.
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 Flavia Nassaka and PesaCheck senior copy editor Cédrick Irakoze and acting chief copy editor Francis Mwaniki.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck 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.
