‘FactSpace West Africa, on Thursday, August 7, 2025, aired the maiden edition of its weekly radio program, The Fact Space, on the University of Ghana campus network, Radio Univers 105.7 FM.
The program, which is scheduled to air every Thursday from 4:30 pm to 5:00 pm, aims to tackle misinformation and disinformation while engaging listeners on trending national issues with a fact-based lens.
The first show was hosted by the Executive Director of FactSpace West Africa, Rabiu Alhassan, with in-studio contributions from two editors in the GhanaFact Newsroom: Gifty Tracy Aminu and Abdur Rahman Alfa Shaban.
“The Fact Space, is a weekly program focused on helping you understand the key challenges and threats that information disorder and the use of digital technology pose to us. We want to help you sift facts from fiction,” Rabiu said in his introductory remarks.
The first session was a recorded conversation with Dr. Aurelia Ayisi, a lecturer from the University of Ghana’s Department of Communication Studies, with the discussion focused on digital access in Ghana, challenges related to online misinformation and disinformation, and how stakeholders are addressing these issues.
It was followed by a vox pop on people’s level of awareness about mis and disinformation and their capacity to detect the same, before Gifty Tracy Aminu gave a round-up of some fact-check reports published on ghanafact.com.
She highlighted the misinformation buster report published about the August 6, 2024, military helicopter crash, explaining how old images and videos had been recycled and misleadingly portrayed as recent.
Alfa Shaban also shared a deep dive into GhanaFact’s Bawku report, highlighting the extent to which social media was fanning the flames of the ongoing conflict through doxxing, hate speech and the use of coded slurs and the role platforms like Meta and TikTok are playing, knowingly or otherwise, in enabling bad actors.
“The social media platforms do have Community Standards, and they claim that they don’t allow for hateful rhetoric and threatening messages to be posted on their platforms. But clearly from what we’ve observed specifically with regards to the Bawku conflict, actors involved in the conflict are using these platforms to foment trouble and to incite the violence happening there,” Alfa added.
The first edition of The Fact Space marked a promising start to FactSpace West Africa’s radio engagement initiative. With its blend of expert insights, real-world public opinion, and fact-checking, the program is well-positioned to become a credible weekly source for fact-seeking listeners in Ghana and beyond.
To listen to the episode, visit our podcast channel ‘The Fact Space’ on Spotify and Afripods.
