Claim
On Friday July 1, 2022, the Patriotic Front-PF Facebook page carried a video in which they claimed that the government had disbursed over K20 million to the Ministry of Education for school feeding programs in 70 districts to encourage the promotion of nutrition in schools. In the uploaded video, the Patriotic Front-PF Facebook page asserted that the pupils seen lining up to collect food were beneficiaries in the school feeding program alleged to be implemented in 70 districts in Zambia. In another Facebook upload of the video, former Ambassador of Zambia to Ethiopia, Hon. Emmanuel Mwamba lamented that the correctional facilities fed better than the school feeding program being implemented in Zambia.
Rating Justification
The fact checking process has determined as false, the claim by the Patriotic Front-PF page that video making rounds on social media is of Zambian pupils collecting food under government’s school feeding programme. The iVerify conducted a video verification using InVID video verification tool to create multiple key frames from the clip, and also using a Google reverse image search for the key frame image. From the results collected, the video was first shared on 28th June 2022 on the Twitter handle for Dr. Bireete Sarah @SarahBireete, a Lawyer and Human rights activist who is also Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Governance (CCG) & Chairperson East & Horn Election Observers Network E-HORNtaken in Uganda. A comment accompanying the video read: “Demographically, the most affected categories by increasing prices of food are children. Schools can hardly afford posho and beans for kids. These nutrition imbalances have lifelong consequences. Join the space on the cost of living at 7pm #SautiUG
@qataharraymond”. This was retweeted by Twawez-ni sisi,
@Twaweza_NiSisi a Non-Governmental Organization implementing a citizen-led initiative, focusing on large scale change in East African countries of Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. Other several Twitter pages also retweeted the post. The assertion, therefore, by the Patriotic Front-PF page that the video circulating on social media of pupils collecting food as beneficiaries of the school feeding program under the Ministry of Education is a video from Zambia, is false.
