Photo of Ethiopian ex-minister taken in the Netherlands in 2019, not the US in 2023

  • This article is more than one year old.
  • Published on August 22, 2023 at 15:56
  • Updated on August 22, 2023 at 16:21
  • 2 min read
  • By Tolera FIKRU GEMTA, AFP Ethiopia

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A Facebook post claims a photo shows former Ethiopian defence minister Lemma Megersa recently inaugurating a project in the United States. However, this is false: the image was taken when Lemma visited Dutch companies as president of Ethiopia's Oromia region in 2019. The post comes from an account purporting to be a well-known politician in Ethiopia and contains a link to another page carrying news about Oromia.

The post was published on August 17, 2023 and has been shared more than 190 times.

Starting with a “#BreakingNews” hashtag in English, the post switches to Oromo and claims that Lemma "has inaugurated the various projects he accomplished in different places of America (sic)".

A photo shows the former Ethiopian defence minister together with his erstwhile foreign affairs counterpart Gedu Andargachew in conversation with another man.

The post includes a link to another Facebook account (archived here) where pro-Oromo stories are regularly shared.

The page that published the misleading image uses the name and photo of Bekele Gerba, a well-known Oromo politician. But Bekele has previously denied having a Facebook account (archived here).

Lemma, once an ally of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed before the pair fell out, has not appeared in public after he was sacked (archived here) as defence minister in 2020.

The claim about the photo showing Lemma abroad in 2023 is false.

Dutch visit

AFP Fact Check conducted reverse image searches and established that the photo shows Lemma and Gedu during a trip to the Netherlands in 2019.

The photo was originally published (archived here) on January 30, 2019 along with other pictures by Nedarland en Afrika, an official Facebook page run by the Netherlands foreign affairs department.

"The Regional President of Oromia, Lemma Megersa, and the Regional President of Amhara, Gedu Andargachew, recently visited The Netherlands," reads the photo caption ((archived here). The pair were visiting Dutch companies that also had branches in Ethiopia.

At the time, Lemma and Gedu were presidents of Oromia and Amhara regional states respectively. Later, they were appointed to federal ministerial positions.

The same photo and report (archived here) in Amharic were also published by the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC), a state-owned broadcaster in Ethiopia, on the same date.

AFP Fact Check previously debunked a claim about Lemma here.

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