The claim was repeated elsewhere on Twitter and Facebook.
Anti-tax protests
Rallies in Kenya turned deadly on June 25 as protesters breached parliament where legislators were voting on the passage of the 2024 Finance Bill. The tax law proposal was designed to usher in new duties and levies on a range of commodities, including staple goods.
Amid mounting unrest, President William Ruto eventually announced the bill’s withdrawal.
The youth-led demonstrations were mostly peaceful at first, with thousands marching in Nairobi and elsewhere in the country against the proposed tax increases.
But tensions flared sharply when police officers fired live rounds on crowds that later ransacked the parliament complex.
AFP journalists saw three people bleeding heavily and lying motionless on the ground near parliament (archived here).
As the chaos escalated and crowds started leaving the city centre, reports circulated of heavy police deployment and live rounds being fired in Githurai 45, a short distance outside Nairobi.
The Law Society of Kenya called for an investigation into the alleged shootings, dubbed the “Githurai massacre” (archived here).
Newspapers spoke of confusion and the use of deadly force: headlines like “Inside night of terror for Githurai residents” and “Conflicting death toll, pain and agony as families search for their loved ones” were used to describe the events in Githurai (archived here and here).
However, the video of a crowd marching with tiki torches does not show a night vigil in Githurai.
Fire Festival
Using the verification tool InVID WE Verify, we located the same video on TikTok here and here, published on August 8, 2022 (archived here and here).
“Annual Dagomba fire festival Ghana,” reads one post. The Dagomba are an ethnic group.
In one of the TikTok clips, onlookers use Dagbani, a widely spoken language in northern Ghana.
According to reports in Ghana (see here, here and here), the festival is known as Bugum Chugu and is celebrated annually in the first month of the Dagomba lunar year (archived here, here and here).
The celebration is marked with singing, dancing, drumming and the waving of flaming torches made of grass.
AFP Fact Check previously debunked the same video when it circulated in Burkina Faso alongside claims that it showed a pan-African march.
The owner of this TikTok account confirmed at the time that the clip was recorded in Yendi, a town in northern Ghana.