By Pascal Ibe
introduction
A 37-year-old, Burkina Faso’s military ruler, Capt Ibrahim Traoré, has skilfully built the persona of a pan-Africanist leader determined to free his nation from what he regards as the clutches of Western imperialism and neo-colonialism.
His message has resonated across Africa and beyond, with his admirers seeing him as following in the footsteps of African heroes like Burkina Faso’s very own Thomas Sankara – a Marxist revolutionary who is sometimes referred to as “Africa’s Che Guevara”.
After seizing power in a coup in 2022, Traoré’s regime ditched former colonial power France in favour of a strong alliance with Russia, his regime has also recorded mile stone results such as setting up a state-owned mining company, requiring foreign firms to give it a 15% stake in their local operations and to transfer skills to Burkinabé people, etc.
But all these achievements, misinformation, and exaggeration of his development continue to sweep Africa and beyond. Since 2024, FACTWATCH Nigeria has countered some false and misleading claims on this here and here.
Claim
With no end of barrage of misinformation and disinformation, a TikTok account, Pan African TV, has shared a video showing the news that the European Union (EU) is begging Traore to invest in Burkina Faso recently.
The video on TikTok has garnered over 600 reactions and more than a hundred comments.
The video had been distributed to the X platform with a caption that reads, “EUROPEAN union return to Burkina Faso 🇧🇫🇧🇫
Begging captain Ibrahim traore”
Verification
We searched thoroughly and could not find any credible news organization in Burkina Faso or elsewhere that reported the visit by the EU to Ibrahim Traore.
When FACTWATCH Nigeria subjected screenshots from the TikTok video to a Google Image Reverse Search, results indicated that the part of the video showing white foreigners with the Burkina Faso’s president, was during a visit by Mr. Lu SHAN, Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to Burkina Faso and his team who came to bid Traore farewell at the end of his three-year diplomatic mission in the country in June 2025.
See other websites that published this story here and here.
This shows that those in the video were not EU leaders but Chinese diplomats. A primary evidence that this video was intentionally plotted to drive misinformation as usual.
We also subjected this video to an AI detection device, Hive Moderation, and the results confirmed that the video was 99% AI-generated.
Verdict
This claim is FALSE, MISLEADING. Findings showed that the news report was AI-generated and the some part of the video were unrelated to the claim.
Conclusion
With a false caption and an AI-generated video, many social media accounts continue to dish out misinformation about the activities of Burkina Faso’s president, Ibrahim Traore.
