Alphonce Shiundu
Verified- Kenya Editor, Africa Check
- Journalist, Freelance
- Contributor, D+C Development and Cooperation
Nairobi
As seen in:
Africa Check,
D+C Development and Cooperation,
Substack,
Miami Herald,
Business Report,
Daily Nation,
Nairobi News,
Kenya Television Network,
The Standard (Kenya),
TimesLIVE,
AllAfrica,
The East African
and
Covers:
Disinformation and information integrity in Africa; fact-checking; OSINT; foreign influence operations; AI and synthetic media; health misinformation; African politics, elections and public policy.
Doesn't Cover:
No product launches, PR announcements, crypto, betting, sport, entertainment or lifestyle. I don't accept paid placements or advertorial
Founding Kenya Editor @AfricaCheck. Disinformation, #FIMI, OSINT & AI literacy in Africa. Writer. Editor. Politics. Parliament. Policy.
Interview
What was your first job as a journalist?
General news reporter
Have you ever used a typewriter?
Yes, back when I started.
How is social media changing news?
The honest answer from where I sit in Nairobi is that social media has changed less about how news is made than about who gets believed.
What's your favorite social network?
X
What story are you most proud of writing or working on?
All stories, really
What advice can you offer to aspiring journalists?
Write accurately every day
When's the best time to pitch you?
Pitch any time via email
What's your favorite drink?
Still water at room temperature
When you're not at a computer, where are you most likely to be?
On a forest/mountain trail, or in a library
What's the most common misperception about your beat?
That we are in the business of telling people they're wrong.
Most people assume fact-checking is a scoreboard: a politician makes a claim, we rule on it, the record is corrected, everyone moves on wiser. If that were how it worked, we'd have finished this job a decade ago.
The misperception underneath it is that false belief is a knowledge problem. It usually isn't. It's a trust problem. People believe things because of who told them, and when it mattered, and whether the person who told them showed up for them before.
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