Africa is the new front line of climate disinformation

COMMENTARY BY Bryan Giemza and Khamadi Shitemi

In West Texas, climate disinformation tactics have become all too familiar. Fossil-fuel interests bankroll so-called “pink slime” outlets such as The Caprock Patriot (now defunct) that pose as local newspapers, while astroturfing campaigns create the illusion of grassroots support for oil and gas industries. Often the story begins with a relatable figure—a struggling farmer, perhaps—casting doubt on the role of fossil fuels in global warming. Only after careful research, following dark money through layers of influence laundering, does industry sponsorship emerge.

Now a similar playbook is unfolding half a world away. In 2024, the BBC profiled Jusper Machogu, a rising voice in rural southwest Kenya who has gained traction with his brand of flimsy but relatable climate skepticism. Machogu dismisses anthropogenic climate change, calling it a #ClimateScam, while accepting donations from Western individuals connected to fossil-fuel interests. Such homespun cases raise a critical question: What happens when sophisticated disinformation tactics target regions where media ecosystems are already fragile?

Over the summer, a group of emerging African scholars and journalists convened at the University of Exeter’s Centre for Climate Communication and Data Science (C3DS) to tackle precisely that question. Their presence underscored how little attention the research community has paid to Africa’s information environment, even as the continent becomes a new laboratory for influence campaigns.

Emerging research from C3DS finds that less than 1% of global research on misinformation in Africa focused on climate. That blind spot is striking because Africa’s young, fast-growing population faces some of the most severe climate shocks, yet also represents a wellspring of potential interventions in the information space. To ignore the region’s information vulnerabilities is to miss the front line of both harm and innovation.

The urgency is clear. Kenya is already battered by climate extremes, from droughts to floods, and in 2023 it hosted the inaugural Africa Climate Summit, resulting in a call for a global carbon tax and financial reforms for climate action. President William Ruto now chairs the Committee of African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change (CAHOSCC). Yet even as political rhetoric heats up, the media tasked with explaining climate realities must wrestle with misinformation daily.

Indeed, environmental misinformation is widespread, but journalists rarely confront it head-on. More troubling is the persistence of “balance” in climate coverage, so that climate deniers receive equal airtime alongside scientific consensus.

“I give them both the same space, so it's up to the audience to decide. What was said by the experts, either in favor of or against climate change, is up to the audience to determine which way to lean and see for themselves,” one seasoned freelance science and environment journalist recently said. “But I don't deny them the opportunity to give them the space to air their own views.” 

This instinct, rooted in journalistic tradition, mirrors practices largely abandoned in the Global North, where editors recognize that “both sides” framing distorts reality when science overwhelmingly supports one conclusion. A recent Internews study echoed this concern, noting that journalists across Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania often feel obligated to present denialist voices in the name of fairness.

The effect is insidious. Every moment spent amplifying baseless doubt undermines urgency for action. And as governments elsewhere hedge—sometimes offering tacit cover for climate denial—the noise grows louder, further drowning out local problem-solvers. 

One reflex response might be to import Northern fixes like fact-checking hubs or media-literacy curricula. But these “copy-paste” interventions do not always translate to African contexts. A platform that flags misinformation in English might be useless in African national languages like Yoruba or Swahili. A newsroom training program geared toward investigative print journalism may fail to reach rural radio reporters or oral storytellers who remain trusted sources. In reality, the most promising interventions are more likely to emerge locally, from those who understand the nuances of culture, and, for example, the power of oral tradition and trusted messengers.

As the C3DS Visiting Fellows observed repeatedly, these gaps reveal a colonial assumption, that approaches to tackling misinformation can be transplanted wholesale, rather than built from the ground up. Another misconception is that climate disinformation is a side story to the climate crisis rather than an essential driver. The World Economic Forum has repeatedly ranked both climate change and misinformation among the world’s top global risks, and both are forecast to persist for years to come. If Africa is ignored as disinformation spreads, the consequences will be predictably global. It is not fair to ask vulnerable populations to fix problems that were not of their making, but it is also true that populations most affected by climate extremes deserve to have the information and agency to fight back.

As it stands, Africa’s information landscape is too often treated as peripheral to the global climate story. Yet as Machogu’s rise shows, it is already the proving ground for the next wave of disinformation. And as the C3DS Fellows remind us, it is also home to a new generation of researchers and journalists determined to chart their own path.

Whether solutions succeed or fail in Africa will reverberate far beyond its borders. To view the continent only as a victim of climate shocks or a target for influence campaigns is to miss the larger truth: Africa is central to the climate story, and its journalists and researchers are taking up the often thankless work of finding new ways forward.

Bryan Giemza, a global misinformation scholar and workshop leader, and Khamadi Shitemi, a Kenyan C3DS Fellow, journalist and current graduate student in Indiana University Bloomington’s Mass Communications program, met at the C3DS gathering at the University of Exeter. 

Shitemi has been interviewing science and environmental reporters across Kenya to probe how they confront misinformation. His work revolves around such questions as how Kenyan journalists might combat environmental misinformation on social media, and how do they conceive their roles in informing the public? 

Giemza is professor of humanities in the Honors College at Texas Tech University. A recent US Fulbright Scholar at the University of Antwerp’s Institute of Development Policy and an active member of the InfoCitizen team, he researches global climate disinformation and digital democracy. His latest book, the edited volume “Sowing the West Texas Wind: Misinformation Causes, Consequences, and Interventions,” will be published by TTU Press in early 2026.