South Sudan dismisses claim it is giving grants worth $41.4 million to entrepreneurs.
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on July 30, 2020 at 12:26
- 2 min read
- By Adeng MAYIK, AFP Kenya
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The grant announcement was posted on June 30, 2020, on a Facebook page called “South Sudan ministry of finance and planning”. The post claims that the South Sudanese government is handing out grants worth $41.4 million to entrepreneurs and farmers as part of an economic development programme that aims to promote local investment.
“Applicants MUST be South Sudanese citizens aged between 23-57 years,” the post adds.
The post includes an application linked to a Google document, which asks people for their personal information, including contact details and information about their businesses.
However, the claim is false. The finance ministry issued a statement on its official Facebook page on July 7, 2020, saying it had never announced any such grant and dismissed the hoax as the work of “hackers”.
“We, therefore, urge the public to be vigilant and disregard such information as a mere media scam; the ministry did not send out any forms to anyone and encourage citizens to dispute that the forms circulating on social media to be filled by entrepreneurs to get access to the alleged funds as fake forms,” the ministry’s post reads.
Ministry officials added that any announcement of the sort would be posted on its official Facebook page as a document with the government’s logo.
The bogus Facebook page has 257 followers and 247 likes and was opened a month ago. Page information shows that it is being run from Kenya.
Meanwhile, the ministry’s official page, called South Sudan’s Ministry of Finance & Planning, has 672 followers and 645 likes and is being managed inside the country. It was also created this year, but in March.
AFP Fact Check recently debunked other bogus government pages in Zambia and Botswana, and in Uganda, where similar scams were being posted.
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