The EconomistJuly 20th 2019 Middle East & Africa 392 or a contract. Popular fake stories include
one in which Mr Abubakar had been “en-
dorsed” by the Association of Nigerian Gay
Men, a fictional entity. Some of the most
popular play on existing beliefs. The hilari-
ous idea that Mr Buhari had died and been
replaced by a Sudanese man named Jubril
seemed credible for many reasons. The
president is old and sickly, and one of his
predecessors died in office.
Do the fibs get through? Researchers
find it hard enough to know how many
people see fake news, let alone how many
believe it. What is certain, though, is that
the truth takes longer to get its boots on.
During the elections the Centre for Democ-
racy and Development, a think-tank run by
Ms Hassan, employed five fact-checkers
who tried to refute dodgy stories. But they
were soon overwhelmed by the volume of
misinformation. “I don’t think fact-check-
ing makes any difference,” she sighs.
Nigeria is not the only place where
WhatsApp is influencing political culture.
Mr Hitchen notes that during elections in
Sierra Leone in 2018, stories spread by an
urban minority on WhatsApp would find
their way onto popular radio talk shows. In
Kenyan elections in 2017 “keyboard war-
riors” used the platform to collect the
phone numbers of group members and al-
legedly sell them to political parties.
Such chicanery has been found else-
where in the world. In Brazil supporters of
Jair Bolsonaro used WhatsApp to deliver
“an onslaught of daily misinformation”,
says Luca Belli, a law professor at Fundação
Getulio Vargas, a university in Rio de Janei-
ro. Partly in response WhatsApp, which
was bought by Facebook in 2014, limited to
five the number of times a user could for-
ward a message. Previous concerns over its
misuse in India prompted WhatsApp to la-
bel messages as having been forwarded.
These changes will only have limited ef-
fect. “You can make it harder to share mis-
information,” says Mr Cheeseman. “But
that just means that it takes longer to
share—it doesn’t make it impossible.” As
long as WhatsApp allows the sharing of in-
formation in groups, it will be used to share
lies as well as truths. The only resilient de-
fence is savvier, more sceptical users.
There are some efforts to use WhatsApp
to encourage those. Several were set up
ahead of the elections in South Africa on
May 8th. One was “What’s Crap on Whats-
App”, an initiative by Africa Check, an ngo
with offices in four African countries. It in-
vited South Africans to forward them po-
tential cases of misinformation, which it
tried to debunk through one of its Whats-
App channels.
Another is the creation of Sizwe Mpofu-
Walsh, a 30-year-old activist and writer. Ea-
ger to produce a political show for young
people, he first considered YouTube and ra-
dio, but instead launched one via Whats-
App.MrMpofu-WalshusesWhatsAppfor
Business,theplatform’scommercialarm,
whichmakesitpossibleto broadcastto
morethanthe256-personlimitinanor-
dinarygroup.Itisa formatthathasproved
successfulinChina(viaanappcalledWe-
Chat)butisrareinAfrica(oranywhere,
really).Heproducesfiveshowseveryweek.
Theyhaveabout10,000viewers,notfaroff
whata cablenewsshowgetsinSouthAfri-
ca.“ThereisanintimacytoWhatsAppthat
makespeoplereadytolistentoa message,”
saysMrMpofu-Walsh.Thatiswhytheplat-
formispopular. Butitisalsowhatcan
makeit dangerous. 7E
bola should never have made it to
Goma, the second biggest city in the
east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
It did because a pastor, who had been in Bu-
tembo apparently trying to cure patients by
laying hands on them, then travelled back.
At each of the three health checkpoints he
passed through, he gave a fake name, keep-
ing his temperature down with heavy doses
of paracetamol. On arriving in the city, he
checked into a clinic where he tested posi-
tive for the disease; he died in an ambu-
lance some hours later while being taken to
a treatment centre back in Butembo.
Such are the difficulties health workers
face when trying to stop the spread of
Ebola, the latest outbreak of which has nowkilled almost 1,700 people in Congo. It is
the second biggest outbreak ever, after the
one in west Africa in 2014-2016, and the
first to happen in a war zone, where doctors
have to worry about guerrillas with ma-
chetes, not just the virus. On the evening of
July 17th, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,
the director-general of the World Health
Organisation (who), announced he had
been advised by the who’s emergency
committee to declare the disease a “public
health emergency of international con-
cern”, only the fifth in history.
Officials long dreaded the moment the
virus makes it to Goma. The city has a pop-
ulation of 2m people, cramped between
Lake Kivu and Mount Nyiragongo, an active
volcano. It directly abuts the Rwandan city
of Gisenyi, and thousands cross the border
each day. Until now the virus has been con-
tained in regions with lousy roads that are
hard to access. In a densely populated ur-
ban area, it could be much harder to keep
track of those whom patients might have
touched.
So far, however, the situation seems to
be under control. No other cases have been
reported in the city and the Congolese min-
istry of health and the whohave been busy
vaccinating anyone who could possibly
have touched the pastor. Outside the
scruffy clinic where he turned himself in,
rows of fidgeting children and their moth-
ers sit around on plastic chairs, waiting for
nurses to prick their arms. Roughly 200
people have been vaccinated in Goma.
Dr Tedros’s declaration came as a sur-
prise to many aid workers. “[Ebola] really
becomes a problem when a chain of trans-
mission is launched,” says Tariq Riebl of
the International Rescue Committee, an
ngo. Declaring an emergency will not
change the nature of the response, says Oly
Ilunga, the Congolese minister of health.
Previously, doctors had worried that de-
claring an emergency might lead other
countries to close their borders. In west Af-
rica, that hampered the response, as sick
people avoided checkpoints. Now the who
says that more international co-ordination
is needed, especially given the threat of a
spread to Rwanda, which is thought to be
less well prepared than Congo and Uganda.
But the response is also running desper-
ately low on funds. The next phase will
need roughly $233m, says the who, and do-
nor countries have so far not contributed
enough. Some suspect that declaring an
emergency is an attempt to unlock some
cash. That sets an awkward precedent, says
David Heyman of the London School of Hy-
giene and Tropical Medicine.
In Goma, buckets of chlorinated water
alongside health workers armed with ther-
mometers are stationed throughout the
city. Residents greet one another coolly,
with nods and fist bumps instead of effu-
sive Congolese handshakes and kisses. 7GOMA
Ebola is declared an international
public health emergencyEbola in CongoThe virus spreads
Washing their hands of it