Misinformation about COVID-19 plaques online social media platforms, a serious problem in many countries that often leads to dangerous decisions about health. On 30^th March, 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) and a network of public health authorities and fact-checking organizations launched Viral Facts Africa, a fact-checking agency assembled by a powerful network of 14 organizations. The initiative is part of the Africa Infodemic Response Alliance (AIRA), a network launched in December, 2020, with 12 organizations and hosted by the WHO. AIRA has the goal of fighting misinformation and educating the public about COVID-19 and other health crises in Africa. The Alliance has grown since then, and now it includes the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC), UNICEF, UNESCO, UN Verified, UN Global Pulse, WHO, the fact-checking organizations Africa Check, PesaCheck, Agence France Presse Fact Check, Dubawa and Meedan, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and Ghana Fact.

 According to the UN Global Pulse—the UN Secretary-General’s global initiative on big data and artificial intelligence—and the WHO website (see below), COVID-19-related information was “shared and viewed over 16 billion times on Twitter and web-based news sites between November 2020 and March 2021 in the 47 countries of the WHO African Region.”

 The initiative shares professionally curated COVID-19-related information formatted to be published on popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It also dispels dangerous rumors about the pandemic that include conspiracy theories or unsupported claims about cures or vaccines. Messages from Viral Facts Africa are freely available in English and French, which have already received a high number of viewing (more than 20 million times) on social media during the test phase.

Visit Viral Facts Africa on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/viralfacts/

Learn more about the initiative at http://viralfacts.org/africa/