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Clickbait post lures Ethiopians with false ‘Safaricom cash promotion’ for thanksgiving festival
A post shared on Facebook claims that African telecommunications company Safaricom is offering a cash prize of 10,000 Ethiopian birr (about $190) in a promotion to mark the Irreecha festival – an annual thanksgiving ceremony in Ethiopia. The post contains a link purported to lead to a site with...
James Okong'o, AFP South Africa, AFP Kenya
Fri, September 30, 2022 at 3:03 AM·3 min read
A post shared on Facebook claims that African telecommunications company Safaricom is offering a cash prize of 10,000 Ethiopian birr (about $190) in a promotion to mark the Irreecha festival – an annual thanksgiving ceremony in Ethiopia. The post contains a link purported to lead to a site with information about how to participate in the giveaway. But the claim is false: Safaricom told AFP Fact Check that it is not running such a promotion. The post was published on an impostor account and the link leads to an unrelated website.
The post was published on Facebook on September 24, 2022, and has since been shared more than 50 times.
Screenshot showing the false post, taken on September 28, 2022
Written in Afaan Oromo, the post translates to: “Safaricom offers 10,000 Ethiopian birrs for Irreecha festival of 2015 E.C as part of its promotional works. Please fill in the following form to register for the promotion. Anyone who shares the link with five other people has a high chance of winning the prize money (sic).”
E.C is an acronym for Ethiopian Calendar – according to the calendar, the current year is 2015 E.C.
Irreecha is an annual cultural festival observed by Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group the Oromos to celebrate the end of the rainy season and to welcome in the harvest period. It is traditionally held in the city of Bishoftu, located in the Oromia region about 50 kilometres from the country’s capital Addis Ababa.
But Safaricom, which is based in Kenya and ventured into the Ethiopian market in 2021, is not running a promotion to mark the festival.
Scam
A search found no promotion of the sort on Safaricom’s official website nor its Facebook or Twitter accounts.
The telecommunications company told AFP Fact Check that it is not offering the claimed giveaway in Ethiopia.
“That is a scam, Safaricom is not running such a promotion in Ethiopia,” said Safaricom.
Safaricom added that it is investigating the people behind the fraudulent post and will “take appropriate action”.
A link in the post does not lead to Safaricom’s website either but rather to a site called AwashJobs.com and a Google form written in Afaan Oromo, titled: “win free money”. The form asks for personal information including a name, phone number and home address.
Impostor account
The post was published on a Facebook page called “Raajii Ashennaaffi” and uses a publicly available photo of Raji Ashenafi Mamade, who graduated from Adama Science and Technology University in 2022 with a dual maths and physics degree after scoring straight A’s in all 60 of his courses.
Ashenafi, who became popular in Ethiopia after his stellar academic performance, told AFP Fact Check that the Facebook account behind the scam is not his.
“I do not own or manage ‘Raajii Ashennaaffi’ Facebook page. It is an account used by malicious people who are defrauding Ethiopians and spreading fake news,” said Ashenafi.
He added that he has reported the account several times to Facebook, but no action has been taken.
AFP Fact Check debunked another false post published by the same account in August claiming that Ashenafi had invented a new maths formula and app.
Many posts on the page share false or misleading information.
Ashenafi shared his official Facebook account with AFP Fact Check.
