MISSING CONTEXT: This video of Somalia’s President criticising his Eritrean counterpart is not from 2024

The video was captured in December 2020.

This video posted on X (formerly Twitter), purportedly depicting Somalia President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud criticising his Eritrean counterpart in July 2024 is MISSING CONTEXT.

The author alleges that President Mohamud made the criticism before a trip to Eritrea. The footage features President Mohamud speaking at the Doodsan Forum (DOF) in Mogadishu.

The text accompanying the video reads, “What a shame. Somalia President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was bashing the Eritrean President prior to his trip to Eritrea. “What Eritrea has done for us (Somalia)” says the Faqash Somali President with a smirky smile. I am paraphrasing here.”

In the video, Mohamud criticises the relationship between Somalia and Eritrea.

President Mohamud landed in Asmara, Eritrea’s capital, for a working visit on 8 July 2024, meeting his host President Isaias Afwerki. Media reports as seen here, here, here, and here indicate the two presidents discussed strengthening bilateral ties and other matters of mutual interest.

A Google reverse image search on keyframes from the video shows it dates back to 2020.

Local media outlets shared the video on their Facebook accounts in December 2020, as seen here, and here. A longer version of the video was posted on YouTube on 5 January 2021.

The title of the forum where President Mohamud spoke was “Diplomacy and Elections.”

President Mohamud, who served as Somalia’s president between 2012 and 2017, was re-elected in May 2022 after defeating Mohamed Farmaajo.

PesaCheck looked into a video posted on X purportedly showing Somalia President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud criticising his Eritrean counterpart before his trip to Asmara in July 2024 and found it to be MISSING CONTEXT.

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.