FALSE: This video is not of Egyptian troops arriving in Somalia in August 2024

The video shows Calidus MCAV-20 armoured vehicles being transported to Ethiopia.

A post on X (formerly Twitter) with a video claiming to show 10,000 Egyptian soldiers deployed to Somalia in August 2024 is FALSE.

The footage in the post shows numerous armoured vehicles being transported by rail.

The text accompanying the video reads, “Egypt pours 10,000 soldiers into Somalia. The Egyptian force is sent as part of the African Union’s mission to stabilise Somalia.”

The Arabic text on the video translates to “The arrival of Egyptian military vehicles and armoured vehicles to Somalia to establish the military base.”

The same footage was shared here, here, here, and here.

Egypt delivered its first military aid to Somalia in over four decades on 28 August 2024, following closer ties between the two countries earlier this year, as seen here and here. The development came after Ethiopia signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Somaliland, a breakaway region of Somalia, to lease coastal land in exchange for potential recognition of Somaliland’s independence, a move that Mogadishu has rejected.

The Somali and Egyptian governments have not disclosed the size of the first military aid shipment that arrived in Somalia. Recently, Egypt and Djibouti offered support for the new Somalia peacekeeping force.

But is the video authentic?

A Google Lens reverse image search on a keyframe established that the video in question is from July 2024 and was not filmed in Somalia.

An image from the footage appeared in a 25 July 2024 article by Defence Web titled “Ethiopia receiving MCAV-20 vehicles from Calidus.”

The Military Africa website also used a screenshot from the video in a 23 July 2024 article titled “Ethiopian Army receives dozens of Calidus MCAV-20 armoured vehicles from UAE.”

The image’s caption reads, “Hundreds of Calidus MCAV-20s seen on rail being transported to Addis Ababa.”

PesaCheck examined an X post with a video claiming to show Egypt deploying 10,000 soldiers to Somalia to establish a military base in August 2024 and found 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 Hassan Istiila and edited by PesaCheck senior copy editor Mary Mutisya and chief copy editor Stephen Ndegwa.

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.