Penplusbytes trained journalists and government information officers from five northern regions in Tamale this week, aiming to slow misinformation that spreads fastest through local languages.
Jerry Sam, Executive Director of the Ghanaian non profit, told participants that false claims move through local language broadcasts faster than fact checkers can catch them, a problem he said is “spreading like wildfire” across the country’s airwaves. He argued the difficulty starts with verification itself: claims made in local languages are harder to trace and check than those in English, which lets misleading content take hold in communities before anyone can push back.
The three day workshop drew media practitioners and staff of the Information Services Department from the Northern, North East, Savannah, Upper West and Upper East regions, training them to identify, verify and counter false narratives at the community and national level.
The session forms part of the Ghana Anti-Disinformation Coalition project, which Penplusbytes launched in Accra in April with funding from the Government of Norway. At that launch, Board Chair Dr. Charity Binka noted that disinformation in local languages spreads even faster than other forms, a concern organisers say makes the five region push into the north a priority rather than an afterthought. The three year initiative rests on three pillars: research into how disinformation spreads in local languages, an AI powered fact checking marketplace called Kasadadi, and a coalition of media houses, civil society groups, technology partners and government agencies working together.
Head of Programmes Precious Ankomah told the Tamale gathering that the daily volume of false content across radio, television and digital platforms keeps climbing, and urged journalists to build fact checking tools into their everyday routines rather than treating verification as a separate task.
Participants who spoke with a NewsGhana correspondent in Tamale praised the training and said they intend to carry what they learned back to their own newsrooms, replicating the sessions for colleagues who did not attend.
