Post falsely claims video shows road leading to French-owned uranium mine in Niger
- Published on September 22, 2023 at 17:43
- 3 min read
- By Erin FLANAGAN
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“See the road that France use to transport uranium from its mine in Niger (sic),” reads a TikTok post published on September 17, 2023.
Viewed more than 74,000 times, the 48-second clip shows a white pickup truck driving across a wooden bridge in a forested area.
The truck falls through the bridge, landing in the river below. Onlookers rush towards the vehicle and open the door to try and help those inside.
The narrator claims that France destroyed another road from the mine, calling it “embarrassing” to have Niger’s former colonial power “stealing” its resources and leaving locals with poor infrastructure.
Soured relations
On July 26, 2023, Niger’s presidential guard staged a coup, ousting Mohamed Bazoum, the country’s democratically elected president (archived here).
Relations between Niger and France, the country’s former colonial power, went swiftly downhill after Paris stood by Bazoum (archived here).
France’s nuclear fuel firm Orano still operates a uranium mine in northern Niger, where about 900 people are employed (archived here).
The country’s military coup raised concerns about Europe’s dependency on uranium mined in the West African nation for its nuclear power plants (archived here).
However, the claim that the video shows a truck falling through a bridge in Niger is false.
Cameroon, not Niger
Several comments under the TikTok post suggested that the video was filmed in Cameroon, not Niger.
Using a keyword search for “truck falling from bridge Cameroon” in French, AFP Fact Check found several social media posts featuring the same video, like this one on X (formerly Twitter).
A TikTok account posted the same video on September 12, 2023 -- five days before the false post was published.
The user also posted a second video showing the same incident from a different angle.
Neither of the TikTok videos specifies where the incident happened.
But another X post claimed the video was taken in a town in central Cameroon called Nguelemendouka (archived here).
AFP Fact Check reached out to Alex Mimbang, the mayor of Nguelemendouka, who confirmed that the incident occurred in Elono, another town just three kilometres away (archived here).
“The video was definitely taken in Nguelemendouka…The incident happened on September 10, 2023,” he told AFP Fact Check.
“It is a plank bridge only meant to be used by pedestrians and motorcyclists. It is a detour for a bridge currently under construction made of more durable materials.”
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