Africa Check receives funding from Google to counter COVID-19 vaccine misinformation

0
On 24 February 2021, staff unloads the first shipment of COVID-19 vaccines distributed by the COVAX Facility at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra, Ghana's capital.The shipment with 600 doses of the vaccine also represents the beginning of what should be the largest vaccine procurement and supply operation in history. The COVAX Facility plans to deliver close to 2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines this year. This is an unprecedented global effort to make sure all citizens have access to vaccines. Anne-Claire Dufay UNICEF UNICEF Representative in Ghana and WHO country representative Francis Kasolo said in a joint statement: After a year of disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 80,700 Ghanaians getting infected with the virus and over 580 lost lives, the path to recovery for the people of Ghana can finally begin."This is a momentous occasion, as the arrival of the COVID-19 vaccines into Ghana is critical in bringing the pandemic to an end,"These 600,000 COVAX vaccines are part of an initial tranche of deliveries of the AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccine licensed to the Serum Institute of India, which represent part of the first wave of COVID vaccines headed to several low and middle-income countries. “The shipments also represent the beginning of what should be the largest vaccine procurement and supply operation in history. The COVAX Facility plans to deliver close to 2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines this year. This is an unprecedented global effort to make sure all citizens have access to vaccines. “We are pleased that Ghana has become the first country to receive the COVID-19 vaccines from the COVAX Facility. We congratulate the Government of Ghana – especially the Ministry of Health, Ghana Health Service, and Ministry of Information - for its relentless efforts to protect the population. As part of the UN Country Team in Ghana, UNICEF and WHO reiterate our commitment to support the vaccination campaign and contain the spread

16 March 2021 – The Google News Initiative (GNI) has named Africa Check as the only African recipient, among a total of 11 projects, to benefit from the new $3-million GNI Vaccine Counter-Misinformation Open Fund, to help debunk COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.

The selection of the 11 recipients followed an intensive review process by a 17-person project team. An expert jury then determined the final projects from among the highest-scoring applicants identified during the early review phases. The Open Fund, which was launched in January, accepted applications from projects that aim to broaden the audience of fact-checkers, especially amongst specific populations who may be disproportionately targeted with misinformation.

“The global rollout of COVID-19 vaccines is exacerbating a perennial problem of misinformation about immunisation. While the infodemic has been global in nature, some of the available research suggests that the audiences who encounter misinformation, and those who conduct essential fact-checking, don’t necessarily overlap,” Taiwo Kola-Ogunlade, Communications and PR Manager, Google West Africa, explains.

The Open Fund builds on the support provided by the GNI, in April and December of last year, to news efforts fighting pandemic misinformation. They anticipate that the selected projects will also benefit from GNI-supported research into the most effective formats, headlines and sources to counter COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.

A total of 309 applications were received from 74 countries, with Africa Check partnering with Theatre for a Change for the purposes of their project. They will produce a series of interactive radio drama shows, in Wolof in Senegal and in Pidgin in Nigeria, to present fact-checking in a more participatory way.

Africa Check, Africa’s first independent nonprofit fact-checking organisation, was established in South Africa in 2012 to promote accuracy in public debate and the media across the continent. It has since expanded to set up offices in Senegal, Nigeria and Kenya.

Stressing that facts matter, the organisation points out that people make decisions, big and small, every day across Africa. “To do this, they rely on publicly available information. Often that information is misleading or just plain wrong,” the organisation cautions on its website.

The GNI was established to work with the global news industry to help journalism thrive in the digital age. Fact-checking is crucial to journalists, who play a fundamental role in supporting evidence-based discourse by listening to the concerns of their audiences and helping correct misconceptions that circulate both online and offline.

“The selected projects stood out for their focus on reaching out to underrepresented audiences, for exploring new formats for fact-checking, and for their rigorous inbuilt strategies to measure impact,” Kola-Ogunlade concludes.