A video of Senegal’s new president Bassirou Diomaye Faye shows him criticising France and telling the country to “leave us alone”.
This isn’t correct. The footage is of a speech made by a different Senegalese politician from the same party, Ousmane Sonko, in 2021. He was speaking in French and the video has apparently been altered using AI to make it appear that he is speaking English, although he did say (in French) “it is time for France to leave us alone”.
A video supposedly showing the new President of Senegal criticising the country’s former colonial power France is not all it claims to be.
Bassirou Diomaye Faye has been sworn in as Africa’s youngest elected head of state at age 44 after winning Senegal’s presidential election, which was held on 24 March.
Footage purporting to show President Faye has been widely shared across Facebook with captions claiming he has told France to “leave us alone”. In the video a man speaking in English says: “It is high time for France to lift its knee off our neck and put an end to this unjust oppression.
“Centuries of misery, human trafficking, colonisation and neocolonisation have caused immeasurable suffering. It’s time to put an end to this cycle of oppression. It’s high time for France to leave us alone.”
However, the man speaking is not President Faye and the video itself seems to have been manipulated using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to translate what he said in French to English.
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While social media posts claim that the video depicts President Faye, it actually shows Ousmane Sonko—another Senegalese politician from the same party, the African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity (PASTEF).
While it is Mr Sonko in the video being shared online, he was not speaking English but French—the official language of Senegal—and it appears to have been manipulated using AI deepfake technology.
The clip appears to have been taken from a speech he made at a press conference in 2021.
But according to a report on the speech by local media in 2021, Mr Sonko did say: “It is time for France to leave us alone.”
Fact checkers at Africa Check told Full Fact that while the video being shared on Facebook has been altered with AI to make it appear as if Mr Sonko is speaking in English, it is a correct translation of a section of the speech he made in July 2021.
Mr Sonko had led PASTEF, the main opposition party in Senegal, with President Faye serving as secretary-general, and both men were detained ahead of the election, which proceeded only after the Constitutional Council overruled efforts by the sitting government under former President Macky Sall to delay them.
After it became unlikely that Mr Sonko would get onto the ballot for the presidential election, following a defamation conviction, the secretary-general was chosen by PASTEF as its candidate. Mr Sonko has now been appointed prime minister of Senegal by President Faye.
If you want to know whether something online might have been digitally altered using AI, our guide to deepfake video and audio provides practical tools to tell whether it is genuine.
We have previously fact checked other deepfakes, including videos falsely claiming to show the French President Emmanuel Macron dancing in a nightclub and Labour leader Keir Starmer promoting an investment scheme.
This fact check has been produced with assistance from Africa Check.
Image courtesy of Bajpaiabhinav
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as altered because the video does not show the new president of Senegal making a speech telling France to “leave us alone”. The man in the video is Ousmane Sonko speaking in 2021, and the video has apparently been altered using AI to make it appear as if he is speaking English.
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