Doctored video falsely linked to recent Kenya-Tanzania diplomatic dispute
- Published on June 5, 2025 at 15:37
- 6 min read
- By Peris GACHAHI, AFP Kenya
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Activists and politicians from Kenya and Uganda recently travelled to Tanzania to show solidarity with opposition leader Tundu Lissu, who is facing treason charges. However, several of them were detained and deported, and two of the activists accused authorities of torture and sexual assault. A video published on social media claims to show CNN’s Fareed Zakaria weighing in on the events. But the clip is altered; the audio is AI-generated, and CNN confirmed it did not publish the video.
“Tanzania vs Kenya Gen-Zs @CNN-Today News,” reads the text overlaid on a TikTok post published on May 22, 2025.
The clip includes what appears to be a segment from the CNN show Global Public Square with host Fareed Zakaria. Below are photos of Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan and Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi.
The chyron reads: “Fareed’s Take” and “Not in My Country: Why Tanzania is going after Open Society”.
“Let’s step back for a moment and recognise where we are right now,” Zakaria says at the beginning of the clip.
The CNN host is not seen again from the four-second mark of the video, but a voice that sounds like Zakaria’s is heard over images, speaking about last year’s “Kenyan Gen-Z-led demonstrations that began as a tax revolt and quickly evolved into a national reckoning”.
“This week, Tanzania's President Samia Suluhu Hassan issued one of her strongest warnings yet. ‘Not in my country,’ she said, referring to a group of East African organisers who, according to Tanzanian intelligence, were flown into Dar es Salaam, booked into $400-a-night hotels, handed shopping money, and sent to target her government,” the voice adds.
The video further claims that the “Open Society Foundation's Southern Africa office” was responsible for funding the activists in what is part of a bigger “digitally coordinated, foreign-funded” disruption.
Towards the end of the audio, the voice says that “Suluhu isn’t rejecting activism,” but “rejecting manipulation”.
The audio is illustrated by visuals: images from Kenya’s 2024 anti-government protests, a recent address by Hassan, clips of Open Society Foundations founder George Soros, and old articles regarding the suspension and regulation of non-governmental organisations in Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda and Zimbabwe.
The video was published elsewhere on Facebook, X, Instagram and YouTube.
Foreign activists
A diplomatic row erupted between Kenya and Tanzania after Kenyan and Ugandan activists and politicians who travelled to Tanzania to witness opposition leader Lissu's treason trial on May 19, 2025, were detained and subsequently deported.
As the trial proceeded, Hassan issued a stern warning stating she would not allow foreign activists to interfere with Tanzania’s internal affairs or cause chaos (archived here).
Two of the activists, Agather Atuhaire from Uganda and Kenya’s Boniface Mwangi, later accused Tanzanian authorities of torture and sexual assault during their incommunicado detention (archived here and here).
These events have attracted both local and international attention, as calls for investigations intensify (here, here and here).
However, the video showing Zakaria’s assessment of the situation is doctored.
Doctored video
AFP Fact Check conducted reverse image searches on keyframes from the clip and found that the introduction was taken from a real Fareed Zakaria segment published by CNN on May 4, 2025 (archived here).
In the first three seconds of the original segment, Zakaria starts with the initial footage used in the TikTok video and says: “Let’s step back for a moment and recognise where we are right now.”
However, rather than talking about Kenya and Tanzania, he goes on to say that “the United States has launched a trade war with the world’s second-largest economy, China”.
The chyron font and text also look different in the original footage.
“Fareed’s take,” it reads, without any subhead about Tanzania.
While the voice sounds like Zakaria’s throughout the TikTok video, there are some noticeable discrepancies in the audio -- the slightly robotic tones, unnatural pacing and odd inflections -- starting from the moment he is no longer visible onscreen.
For example, there are unnatural pauses in the middle of sentences, such as when the voice says “Kenyan [long pause] Gen-Z-led demonstrations that began as a tax revolt” and “a group of East African organisers who, according to Tanzanian intelligence, were flown [long pause] into Dar es Salaam”.
This is corroborated by InVID-WeVerify's audio detection tool which suggests strong evidence of voice cloning.
AFP Fact Check found no record of Zakaria commenting on the recent Tanzania-Kenya dispute.
“This video purportedly showing CNN’s Fareed Zakaria’s take on foreign influence in Tanzania and Kenya never aired on CNN and is entirely fabricated,” Mariana Piñango, a spokesperson for CNN, told AFP Fact Check.
Additionally, contrary to the claim in the AI-generated video, there has been no public statement from Tanzania’s national intelligence authority addressing the detention of the Kenyan and Ugandan activists or linking them to any paid foreign influence operations.
The Open Society Foundations denied the accusations made in the video in an email response to AFP Fact Check.
“The video is an AI-generated fake that includes false allegations against the Open Society Foundations. We are a nonpartisan charitable organisation that works across Africa and around the world to promote human rights, equity, and justice.”
AFP Fact Check previously debunked another claim related to the recent Kenya-Tanzania tensions.
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