Algerian housing project falsely associated with Burkina Faso’s military leader

Published on April 3, 2025 at 11:51
4 min read
By Samad UTHMAN, AFP Nigeria

Following his emergence in 2022 as the head of the military junta in Burkina Faso, Ibrahim Traore and his government have regularly received praise on social media for infrastructure and development milestones that are unrelated to the country. One example is a video posted on Facebook that purportedly shows a massive low-cost high-rise residential block constructed under Traore’s leadership. However, the claim is false; the video shows a national building project undertaken in Tizi Ouzou in northern Algeria.

“Burkina Faso is being transformed, intense construction going on. Ibrahim Treore is great (sic),” reads the caption of a Facebook reel circulating in Nigeria since March 16, 2025.

Screenshot showing the false post, taken March 27, 2025

Shared more than 8,000 times, the video’s voiceover claims that “for some time now, Burkina Faso has been quiet, and now they [the government] have started doing massive construction of low-cost houses”.

The post was shared by an account called “The Inspirational Ark”, which posts video content about social issues in Nigeria and highlights projects purportedly undertaken by countries within the Alliance of Sahel States (abbreviated as AES in French) — a bloc comprising Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.

AFP Fact Check found that the account also published five other short clips showing the same construction site (as seen here, here, here, here and here).

Together, these five clips make up a longer video that also features in the account's timeline as part of a post that claims the apartments “will be given to the citizens of Burkina Faso for them to live in”.

After Traore took power in September 2022, posts have regularly popped up on social networks – some using media generated by Artificial Intelligence tools – falsely linking him to projects and policies found elsewhere in the world (archived here).

This coordinated misinformation has been attributed to Russia’s influence operations in Africa (archived here).

AFP Fact Check found that the high-rise buildings in the video are, likewise, unrelated to Burkina Faso.

Video from Algeria

Using Google Lens to conduct reverse image searches on keyframes from the video, AFP Fact Check found a TikTok account with dozens of clips shot at the same construction site (archived here).

We were able to match elements from the Facebook Reel to these TikTok videos, most notably the design of the buildings. The distinguishing architecture is seen 30 seconds into the Reel and in the first second of one of the videos published on December 4, 2024, on the TikTok page (archived here).

Comparison showing similarities between the clip in the claim (left) and one of the TikTok videos (right)

AFP Fact Check also found that the Facebook Reel and the TikTok videos feature the same distinctive mountain ridge in the background.

Graphics showing the mountain ridges of the Facebook Reel (left) and the TikTok video

The same building design is seen in many other videos on the TikTok page, each captioned with hashtags like “#aadl”, “#tiziouzou”, and “#algerie”.

A search of the hashtag keywords revealed that AADL is the abbreviation for “Agence Nationale de l'Amélioration et du Développement du Logement”, which means National Agency for Housing Improvement and Development.

According to its website, AADL is an Algerian government agency established in 1991 under its housing ministry (archived here).

A search combining the keywords in the caption revealed that the building site is one of AADL’s ongoing projects in Tizi Ouzou, the capital of Tizi Ouzou province in northern Algeria.

We also found a Facebook group where people who have bought apartments in the housing project ask questions and share updates.

On October 7, 2024, a group member posted videos and pictures featuring the same architectural design seen in the previous videos, captioned “AADL Irdjen 4/10” (archived here).

Screenshot showing the Facebook group post, taken March 27, 2025

Irdjen is a town to the west of Tizi Ouzou.

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