FactCheck Africa Partners Meta’s Language Technology to Fight War Against Misinformation in Africa
In a major step toward combating digital misinformation across Africa, AI-powered fact-checking platform MyAIFactChecker has officially partnered with Meta’s Language Technology initiative. The partnership, announced by FactCheck Africa founder Abideen Olasupo in Ilorin, aims to advance open-source language tools designed specifically for Africa’s diverse linguistic landscape. This move comes as misinformation continues to thrive in regions with limited access to fact-checking resources in local languages.
Meta’s Language Technology Partner Program is focused on supporting organizations working to improve content moderation and information accessibility in underserved languages. With this new partnership, MyAIFactChecker will now play a key role in training AI systems for better translation and speech recognition capabilities tailored to African dialects. According to Olasupo, this collaboration represents not just technological progress, but a broader push toward linguistic inclusion and digital equity across the continent.
Describing the partnership as a “milestone moment,” Olasupo emphasized the complexity of Africa’s communication environment, where over 2,000 languages are spoken. He stressed that technological solutions must be just as diverse and adaptable. By working with Meta, MyAIFactChecker will contribute critical linguistic data to support more inclusive and accurate AI models—bridging the gap between fact-checking tools and the everyday languages spoken across African communities.
As part of their commitment, MyAIFactChecker will provide over 10 hours of speech recordings, extensive written texts, and thousands of translated sentence pairs to help train more responsive AI systems. These contributions are expected to significantly enhance the precision and cultural relevance of language technologies used in fact-checking. Olasupo pointed out that this data will directly feed into open-source efforts, benefiting not just Meta’s tools but the broader tech community.
Ultimately, the partnership is about more than fighting fake news—it’s about empowering African citizens with the tools to think critically and identify truth in a complex digital age. With this new chapter, MyAIFactChecker is not only expanding its technological reach but also deepening its impact on media literacy and public trust. For Olasupo, the program’s endorsement signals recognition of the group’s leadership in harnessing innovation to solve real-world problems in Africa.
Source: Arise