Post falsely claims Kenyan cabinet secretary involved in helicopter crash

Published on April 16, 2025 at 15:57
Updated on April 16, 2025 at 16:57
4 min read
By Peris GACHAHI, AFP Kenya

According to an April 2025 report, an engine malfunction caused the helicopter crash that killed Kenya’s former defence force chief a year earlier. Days before the report’s release, a TikTok post shared a video claiming that the country’s health cabinet secretary and ex-defence minister Aden Duale was involved in a chopper crash in the Kenyan coastal town of Malindi. But the claim is false; the video shows a light training aircraft which crashed along the Malindi-Mombasa highway at the beginning of the year. There have been no reports of Duale being involved in an accident and he is still performing his ministerial duties.

“Police chopper carrying CS Aden Duale crash in Malindi,” reads the text overlaid on a TikTok post dated April 9, 2025.

Screenshot of the false post, taken on April 14, 2025

The clip, shared 499 times, includes an image of Duale and a video labelled “2025” showing the wreckage of an aircraft surrounded by onlookers.

The post, which has since been deleted, also included unrelated text promoting the Kenyan government’s Financial Inclusion Fund, also known as the Hustler Fund. But the USSD codes provided to access the money are deceptive and do not follow the correct format provided by the government (archived here).

Duale became the health cabinet secretary on March 26, 2025, after President William Ruto reshuffled his cabinet (archived here).

He was previously the cabinet secretary of environment, climate change and forestry, and cabinet secretary for defence before that.

On April 18, 2024, then defence force chief Francis Ogolla died in a helicopter crash, following which Duale said that an investigation report into the accident would be made public (archived here and here).

A year later, the defence ministry released the report, revealing that the crash was caused by an engine malfunction (archived here).

However, the TikTok video claiming that Duale recently met the same fate is false.

Unrelated crash

AFP Fact Check conducted reverse image searches on keyframes from the clip to find the original footage.

A longer version of the video was published by Kenyan media outlet Nation on January 10, 2025 (archived here).

“3 dead as light aircraft crashes on Malindi-Mombasa highway,” reads the video’s title.

The same helicopter wreckage - white tail with green, black and red stripes - and burnt debris scattered on the ground can be seen in both videos.

Screenshots comparing the false post (left) and the original footage published by Nation

According to a report by The Standard, the Cessna 182 aircraft was on a training mission and caught fire after crash-landing, hitting multiple motorcyclists in the process. Among those killed were the pilot, a motorcycle rider and a pillion passenger (archived here).

The Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) confirmed that the aircraft with registration number 5Y-CDC crashed two kilometres from Malindi airport (archived here). Duale was not on board.

The incident was reported by other local and international media outlets (archived here and here).

There are no credible reports to support the claim of Duale being involved in a helicopter accident. An incident that comes close was in July 2023, when a Kenya Defence Force chopper accompanying the helicopter Duale was in crashed on a security mission in northern Kenya’s Turkana County (archived here).

Duale’s social media activity shows that he has been carrying out his ministerial responsibilities as usual.

On the day the TikTok video was published, he presided over the signing of a contract at the Ministry of Health and was later hosted on the JKLive show on Kenya’s Citizen TV (archived here and here).

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