Strengthening Media and Information Literacy in Africa

In the face of escalating disinformation campaigns, enhancing Media and Information Literacy (MIL) across the African region is increasingly critical

The digital world has accelerated thedemocratisation of information, rendering every user a de facto editor, fact-checker, and amplifier. Social media plays an integral part in shaping societies’ collective perception, influencing political discourse, and even disrupting peace.

Although it has empowered voices once unheard, it has also left citizens vulnerable to hearsay, propaganda, and disinformation campaigns. For Africa, a continent marked by rapid technological adoption, this presents both opportunity and peril. In 2024, a pivotal survey on political disinformation in Africa revealed that a significant majority of respondents in Botswana, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, and South Africa prefer social media over traditional news sources like radio, television, and websites, leaving them increasingly vulnerable to disinformation. This shift underscores a broader global trend highlighted in the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report, where misinformation and disinformation were identified amongst the top global threats, surpassing even extreme weather events.

Disinformation has the power to disrupt elections, fuel communal tensions, and weaken democratic institutions. Disinformation campaigns are often orchestrated by both domestic actors and foreign powers. Thus, strengthening Media and Information Literacy (MIL) within the African region is essential, not just as a civic skill but even as a tool for peace building.

Africa’s Vulnerabilities 

Africa’s information environment carries several distinctive vulnerabilities. First, the speed of digital penetration has exposed vast populations to the online space without the gradual development of information habits. The absence of prior exposure to curated media could make it difficult to distinguish credible information from propaganda.

In 2021, Nigeria banned Twitter (now X) after the platform deleted a tweet by then-President Muhammadu Buhari that was deemed to incite violence. The government claimed the platform was undermining national stability, but the move was widely criticised as censorship. The seven-month ban revealed that restrictive local regulatory steps do little to curb misinformation and instead weaken public trust, this is one crucial reason why Africa’s fight against disinformation must prioritise MIL.

While many can navigate devices with ease, far fewer can evaluate, verify, and interpret the flood of information they encounter.

Second, the social media ecosystem in Africa is dominated by global platforms with weak local moderation systems. Content in African languages such as Amharic, Oromo, Hausa, etc., often slips through algorithmic filters, making disinformation particularly potent. Third, Africa’s youth, being digital natives, thus they play an integral role in amplifying the dissemination of false information,  through peer networks.

Finally, the geopolitical dimension cannot be ignored. Competing narratives from China, Russia, and Western countries are increasingly shaping African online discourse. There have been numerous instances where actors deploy state-sponsored media outlets, bot networks, and disinformation campaigns to influence policy preferences, geopolitical alignments, and public opinion. For example, during elections in Mali and the Central African Republic, Russian-linked networks such as the Wagner Group’s media arms coordinated online campaigns to spread disinformation within the African region.

The Spread of False Narratives 

False narratives now travel faster than institutions can respond. A 2024 report by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies identified 23 disinformation campaigns targeting African countries, with 16 linked to Russian actors. Political parties reportedly paid influencers to spread misinformation, including fake endorsements and fabricated narratives, as seen in the 2023 Nigerian presidential elections. This manipulation of public perception underscores the vulnerability of electoral processes to digital interference.

Even the health sector is not immune to these challenges. In Uganda, during the 2022–2023 Ebola outbreak, misinformation campaigns falsely claimed that the disease was exaggerated or caused by witchcraft, undermining public health efforts and complicating containment measures. During the COVID-19 outbreak, it was revealed by an online survey conducted amongst 452 citizens of Cameroon, Nigeria, and Senegal, that the abundance of conflicting information about COVID-19 made them reluctant to adopt public health recommendations.

Efforts to combat this digital disinformation are underway, with organisations like Fact-Check Ghana, UNESCO and African Centre for Media & Information Literacy (AFRICMIL) working to promote fact-based public discourse and media literacy. However, the rapid evolution of digital platforms and the increasing sophistication of disinformation tactics pose significant challenges to these initiatives.

Digital Uptake Without Critical Literacy

In a region often constrained by resources, growing digital adoption has become a catalyst for economic activity and social mobility. It reflects high levels of functional digital literacy i.e. the everyday ability to communicate, transact, and participate online. Yet the functional use of the digital landscape should not be mistaken for critical literacy. While many can navigate devices with ease, far fewer can evaluate, verify, and interpret the flood of information they encounter.

Africa’s high baseline of digital literacy has not yet been matched by a comparable level of MIL, leaving communities vulnerable to the unchecked spread of misinformation and deliberate disinformation campaigns.

While Africans have embraced mobile tools, the ability to evaluate sources, verify claims remains underdeveloped till date. A study by Camri in 2020 across seven African countries found that MIL is largely absent, with South Africa the only nation to include even limited misinformation literacy in its school curriculum. Internet penetration itself is uneven; as of 2023, only about 37 percent of Africans were online, and just 27 percent used mobile internet. These gaps mean that while connectivity is growing, the region remains acutely vulnerable to misinformation and disinformation. The paradox is clear – people are more connected than ever, yet less equipped to critically judge the content they consume and share.

In such an environment, the responsibility to judge what is shared and consumed online becomes not merely personal but collective. In a digital ecology where a false voice can amplify faster than a fact, the burden falls on each user to pause, scrutinise, and verify before acting.

This urgency sets the stage for a need to recalibrate the current landscape of MIL across Africa.

National and International Responses to the MIL Gap 

Across Africa, governments, civil society organisations, and international donors have launched initiatives to promote media literacy. Notably, the African Centre for Media & Information Literacy (AFRICMIL) has emerged as a continental reference point. In May 2025, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and related bodies urged states to develop national media and information literacy policies, along with legal frameworks for regulating digital platforms and ensuring information integrity.  Such calls reflect growing recognition that piecemeal, donor-driven efforts must yield to structural regulation and policy support. UNESCO and other international organisations have also invested heavily in journalist trainings, workshops, and awareness campaigns in countries such as Nigeria, South Africa, and Ghana.

A particularly significant effort was UNESCO’s “Media and Information Literacy for Youth Civic Engagement in Africa” project. It reached over 2,400 youth leaders and 230 youth organisations in Burkina Faso, Burundi, Ethiopia, Gabon, Namibia, and Nigeria. More than half of the participants were women, and the programme deliberately embedded MIL principles into the policies of youth organisations, rather than limiting itself to one-off workshops. Participants were able to identify hate speech and disinformation, but also a shift in their everyday behaviour, their “language on social networks changed,” reflecting more responsible and civic-minded engagement. This shows that structured, well-designed initiatives can deliver tangible outcomes when they are integrated into institutional practice.

However, most programmes have focused on journalists or urban elites, while everyday users—the teachers, elders, health workers, or market women who are the real conduits of information, rarely receive systematic support. As a result, Africa’s high baseline of digital literacy has not yet been matched by a comparable level of MIL, leaving communities vulnerable to the unchecked spread of misinformation and deliberate disinformation campaigns.

Towards an African MIL Model

If Africa is to strengthen resilience against both misinformation and disinformation, it must develop a distinctly African MIL model. Such a model would need to cater to the local areas, languages, and community structures, while drawing lessons from global practices. Central to this effort would require the strengthening of fact checking organisations to institutionalise verification and simultaneously ensuring that MIL becomes a universal civic skill accessible to all citizens.

MIL needs to be introduced to the masses from the foundational level itself. That would require governments and educational institutions to embed MIL into school curricula and could also introduce training modules for teachers and professors within these institutes to ensure effective participation of all in understanding what MIL is all about.

Making people of rural areas and other informal networks aware about MIL and it’s importance forms crucial to address the misinformation crisis. The best way this information could reach them would be through their trusted sources such as health workers, local leaders, religious leaders, teachers, amongst others and should be disseminated. It would be important that this information is available in local languages.

While AI has been leveraged mostly to proliferate social media with false information, one cannot dismiss its crucial role in fighting the very same issue its proficient in creating. AI tools could prove advantageous for fact checking and local language moderation.

Fact-checking organisations such as Africa Check, Ghana Fact, Namibia FactCheck and Dubawa would play a critical role in identifying falsehoods and verifying claims. Yet their impact depends on more than debunking; it requires capacity-building, training, and collaboration with educators, journalists, and civil society. At the same time, every citizen must be equipped with the basic MIL skills to question, cross-verify, and interpret the information they consume daily.

Only when professional fact-checking structures and citizen-level literacy work in tandem can African societies build true resilience against disinformation, ensuring that digital connectivity translates into informed, democratic participation rather than confusion and control.

This commentary originally appeared in Observer Research Foundation.