The image showing road degradation was taken on the Dolisie-Mossendjo road in the Republic of Congo, not in the Central African Republic.
On September 3, 2022, the site leréférentiel-Info shared an article with an image depicting advanced road degradation in Central African provincial cities. This image was also posted by the Facebook page “Tubcentro” on September 3, 2022, under the title “The suffering of transporters in the Central African Republic in Basse-Kotto. There are no roads.”
Verification:
After checking through the “Reverse Image Search” tool, it was found that the image published by leréférentiel-Info was originally posted by the site les échos-congobrazza.com on December 10, 2020, illustrating the degradation of the Dolisie-Mossendjo road and the risk of traffic disruption between these cities in Congo-Brazzaville.
Thus, this is an out-of-context image that leréférentiel-Info and the page Tubcentro, managed by Central Africans, used to illustrate the poor condition of roads in the Central African Republic.
The same image has been republished several times by news sites such as “Gabon Média Time (GMT)” on April 5, 2022, to draw attention to complaints from the population about the state of the Ovan-Makokou road in the Ogooué-Ivindo province, as well as on other digital social media sites such as the Facebook page of the African Community Radio on December 5, 2020.
Capture d’écran Radio LLC
Context:
This image, taken between 2019 and 2020, appears in a context where roads in the CAR are indeed in poor condition due to the rainy season, marked by floods in the capital, Bangui, and other regions of the country after heavy rains in July and August 2022.
In conclusion, the research results show that the image shared by leréférentiel-Info and Tubcentro is out of context.
— M.P.V
