United States has given the Ugandan government USD 25 million to pay every adult USD25 a month for 3 months.
The post contains a video of Mr Christopher Krafft, the Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Kampala, Uganda, making the announcement of the grant to the government of Uganda on May 26., Mr Krafft announced that the US had given the Ugandan government USD 15 million to support the COVID-19 response, and this would go directly to the State., Contrary to the claim in the post, USD 15 million was allocated to the government of Uganda, while USD 10 million was given to GiveDirectly, a nonprofit organization operating in seven African countries that makes unconditional cash transfers via mobile phones to families living in extreme poverty., Breakdown of GiveDirectly’s operations in Uganda (via the GiveDirectly website), GiveDirectly sent out the first payments to Ugandan households in response to COVID-19 in late April 2020, and each household on the programme received between UGX 100,000 and 240,000. The organization’s website states that these cash transfers are meant for vulnerable households, not the wider population as the Facebook post claims., He added that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) had separately awarded an additional USD10 million through GiveDirectly to provide direct cash grants of USD 25 a month to adults in the most affected communities for a period of three months., The post appears to selectively ignore the mention of GiveDirectly., PesaCheck has looked into a Facebook post claiming that the United States has given the Ugandan government USD 25 million to pay every adult USD 25 a month for three months and finds it to be PARTLY 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 news 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 Pius Enywaru and edited by PesaCheck News Editor Enock Nyariki., The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck Managing Editor Eric Mugendi., 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., Written by, Written by
PARTLY FALSE: The USD 25 million that Uganda has received for COVID-19 relief is not meant for distribution to every adult