Disinformation. The Ethiopian government tries to censor foreign media and spreads fakenews on the web.

As the Ethiopian government attempts to enforce censorship agains media reporting the political crisis and civil wars in Tigray and Oromia, Journalism.co.uk. discovers that the government agency of cyber control: INSA is at the origin of a colossal disinformation operation that involves 1.1 million fake user accounts on the Facebook platform alone.

Last week, the editorial staff of Italian magazine Focus On Africa received from the Ethiopian Embassy in Rome a letter of disappointment on the articles published by the “terrorist” Fulvio Beltrami, judged to be factious, unethical, unilateral and untrue. A clear attempt to censor foreign journalists and media which, considering the zero autonomy of the Ethiopian diplomatic corps, was probably decided by the central government of Addis Ababa.

The same government that finances, organizes and disseminates a mountain of fakenews on the web through its cyber control agency: Ethiopian Information Network Security Agency (INSA), founded by Premier Abiy in 2008 and directed by him until 2010.

This is what report Journalism.co.uk., the surveillance platform for the correct information. The survey was carried out in collaboration with the HawCheck association, which verifies the reliability of the news disseminated on social media through multilingual staff and researchers. HawCheck offers to many African Countries the tools to verify and analyze published news.

Last month, Facebook removed dozens of fake accounts in Ethiopia targeting home users of Tegaru, Oromo origin, and foreign journalists. An investigation by Journalism.co.uk revealed that the fake accounts were link to the state agency INSA. A really incredible number of fake accounts: around 1.1 million and 766.000 fake social group forums. Each media account was churning out 12 fakenews per day.

The operation conceived and managed by INSA had chosen Facebook as a dissemination platform as social media, because it is the main source of digital news in the country. INSA counted on the lack of verification of the news published and on the low levels of media literacy of the majority of Ethiopians, unable to sift through true and false news. A perfect recipe for a colossal work of disinformation for ethnic-political purposes.

Social media use in Ethiopia is relatively low compared to other countries, but the number of social media users is increasing rapidly, particularly at events such as national elections. According to Datareportal, about 6.7 million Ethiopians use social media — about 6% of the population — but their number grew by half a million in 2020 alone.

The mainstream public (with no internet access) relies largely on government-owned news agencies for their information and most of the more or less pro-government private media. When it comes to digital news, however, most Ethiopians turn to Facebook.

“The Facebook environment is mainly divided into two: those that are in favor of the government and those that are against it,” explains Ayalew, an expert at Journalism.co.uk, adding that both sides are guilty of spreading misinformation and misinformation on social platform. The survey established that the government is responsible for 70% of the widespread fakenews while the opposition (Tegaru, Oromo or other ethnic groups) for the remaining 30%.

The vast majority of false news transmitted by INSA are written in the Amharic language (82%) compared to the texts in English (18%). There are two main reasons: Amharic is a more widespread language in Ethiopia than English and a language little known internationally, therefore easier to escape from Facebook control software that work on keywords.

The fakenews disseminated on Facebook and other social media by the Ethiopian government in 54% concern news invented from scratch, in 32% of cases of true news but altered for political purposes and in 14% of the remaining cases pure incitement to ethnic hatred.

Most of the fake news are the result of “fabrications”, often associated with the manipulation of images with the aim of influencing national and international audiences. The main topics preferred by INSA for fakenews: crimes charged to the TPLF and the OLA including use of child soldiers, GERD mega dam, federalism, war in Tigray, corruption, international relations.

INSA has denied any involvement in disseminating fakenews online, despite the evidence presented by Journalism.co.uk. The HawCheck association points out that Ethiopia has excellent legislative and control tools to prevent the spread of fakenews and fight disinformation.

A control work technically facilitated by the fact that there is only one telecommunications company operating in the country: Ethio Telecom and the law against Fakenews in force since 2008 and revised (with more restrictive measures) in 2021.

Unfortunately, these technical and juridical tools are used by Ethiopian government against the Ethiopian media and journalists not aligned with official propaganda who try to spread real news that, obviously, the regime does not like.

For more information, we recommend reading the report: “Fakenews, disinformation and hate speech in Ethiopia: a vulnerability assessment” drawn up in April 2021 by the European Institute for Peace and available at the link: https://www.eip.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Fake-News-Misinformation-and-Hate-Speech-in-Ethiopia.pdf