Kenyan First Lady Margaret Kenyatta is giving out Ksh30,000 grants to help Kenyans during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The post was published on May 14 by an account impersonating the first lady, using her name and photos., The claim alleges that the first lady is giving the grants with support from President Uhuru Kenyatta. Interested applicants are required to send a registration fee of Ksh599, and immediately after confirmation that the money has been received, the Ksh 30,000 grant is supposedly sent to the applicants’ MPesa accounts., State House spokesperson Kanze Dena has dismissed the claim made by the post, saying that the alleged grants are not from the office of the first lady and that the information does not originate from Margaret Kenyatta’s official communication channels., “We have verified accounts that would share such information. If it is not from an official platform then it is definitely not from the first lady,” she said., The first lady’s official Twitter and Facebook accounts, which routinely update the public on initiatives involving the first lady, do not mention the alleged Ksh 30,000 grants initiative., Facebook Page Transparency for the first lady’s official account shows that the page was created on July 29, 2013, while the first activity on the impostor Margaret Kenyatta account was on February 23, 2020., PesaCheck has previously looked into a similar hoax claiming that the First Lady was offering motor vehicles to Facebook users in response to COVID-19, and found it to be false., PesaCheck has looked into the claim that First Lady Margaret Kenyatta is giving out grants of Ksh30,000 as financial aid to Kenyans during the COVID-19 pandemic and finds 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 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 Fact-Checker Linda Ngari and edited by PesaCheck Deputy 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 media and other civic watchdog organisations in 14 African countries., Written by, Written by
HOAX: First Lady Margaret Kenyatta is not giving out Ksh 30,000 grants the COVID-19 pandemic