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DISINFO DESK
Viral Misinformation
No, Kenyans Aren't Marching Against Xenophobia. That's 2024 Tax-Bill Footage.
A video claiming to show Kenyans protesting President Ruto's crackdown on foreign traders has racked up tens of thousands of views since September 9 — but three separate fact-checkers traced it back to 2024 anti-tax demonstrations.
FILED SEP 23, 2026 · UPDATED SEP 23, 2026 · 3 SOURCES
The Claim
On September 2, 2026, Kenyan President William Ruto ordered a crackdown on foreign nationals — mostly from neighboring countries — working as hawkers and small-scale traders, giving them 90 days to regularize their documentation or face enforcement [1][2]. The move drew accusations of xenophobia at home and abroad.
A week later, on September 9, an X post captioned "Kenya: Citizens rise against their own President to say NO to xenophobia" began circulating a 30-second video of a large crowd moving through city streets, some riding atop a truck [1]. It spread across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X in English, Arabic, Kinyarwanda, and French, racking up over 75,000 views and nearly 5,000 engagements [3]. The video does not show anything related to the 2026 crackdown.
The Evidence
Three independent fact-checking organizations — AFP Fact Check, Africa Check, and Dubawa — reverse-image-searched the footage and reached the same conclusion [1][2][3]. The keyframes match video first published on June 25, 2024, during mass protests against Kenya's Finance Bill 2024, a proposed tax package that triggered weeks of youth-led demonstrations that year [1].
AFP Fact Check geolocated the footage to Nairobi's Koinange Street and matched the crowd's chants to songs and slogans documented by contemporary reporting from the 2024 protests [1]. Africa Check found the same clip embedded in an April 2025 BBC Africa Eye documentary about the June 25, 2024 killings during those anti-tax protests — a full year before the video resurfaced with a new, false caption [3]. Dubawa separately traced archived copies of the same footage back to 2024 uploads on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok [2].
None of the three found any evidence of an actual large-scale 2026 protest against the foreign-trader crackdown. Kenyan activists had publicly threatened to organize demonstrations over Ruto's policy, but as of the fact-checks, no protest of the scale shown in the video had taken place [1][3].
Who's Spreading It
The video's spread tracks a familiar pattern: a real, currently-relevant grievance (the xenophobia fears following Ruto's crackdown) gets illustrated with unrelated old footage that looks dramatic and confirms what sharers already believe. The multilingual spread — Arabic, French, and Kinyarwanda captions alongside the original English — suggests the clip moved well beyond Kenya's own social media conversation, reaching audiences in neighboring countries and the wider region who had no way to recognize the 2024 footage on sight [3].
The Verdict
FALSE. The viral video is genuine footage of a real event — but that event is the 2024 Finance Bill protests, not a 2026 demonstration against xenophobia or the crackdown on foreign traders. Three separate fact-checking organizations independently verified the same origin and found no evidence any protest matching the video actually happened in 2026 [1][2][3].
SOURCES · 3
- [1]AFP Fact Check (via Yahoo News) - Old protest footage falsely linked to backlash against Kenya's foreign business crackdown
76/100 · yahoo.com
- [2]Dubawa - False! 2024 protest videos used to show alleged demonstrations against Ruto's clampdown on foreigners
72/100 · dubawa.org
- [3]Africa Check (via allAfrica.com) - Kenya: No, This Viral Video Does Not Show Kenyans Protesting Against Xenophobia in 2026
72/100 · allafrica.com
MEBRO · DISINFO DESK · mebro.app
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