During the briefing period of October 20 and November 20, 2025, Ethiopia was still in the midst of an intensifying wave of information disorder and hate speech that touched every aspect of public life. What was once largely confined to political discourse has now expanded into social, educational, and economic domains, reshaping how citizens access and interpret information. Misleading claims, including manipulated visuals such as deepfakes, and coordinated disinformation campaigns spread rapidly across social media platforms.

The spread of distorted claims consistently ruined the integrity of both cognitive and structural. In addition to muddying public perception, the online claims directly attacked the nation’s cybersecurity, caused instability in financial markets, and made the public lose trust in institutions faster. The country is still at war with the information from different directions, and the war has made the country’s information still polarized and weak. and the society that was made up of individuals, communities, and organizations found it very difficult to operate without being caught in the trap of manipulation by the miscreants.

During the monthly briefing period, we spotted and debunked numerous coordinated hate speech and disinformation campaigns. The project’s trainees debunked several local and international claims, such as scams that are related to Shein and Poppo live applications that were very controversial and somehow used to scam the wider public, along with such assertions as scam elements, recently, a trend was seen where unscrupulous travel agencies and visa consultancies are leveraging the pervasive reach of social media to systematically scam the public. These fraudsters deploy highly sophisticated and targeted advertisements on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, promising guaranteed visas, expedited job placements abroad, and dream vacations at low prices. 

The digital landscape was flooded with a surge of AI-generated deepfakes, predominantly designed to spread political disinformation. A significant portion of this content specifically targeted the sensitive geopolitical tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea concerning Red Sea access and port rights, fabricating scenarios to inflame nationalist sentiments and muddy diplomatic waters. Amid this disinformation crisis, even high-ranking officials, including the Prime Minister, fell victim to sophisticated satirical deepfakes. This trend reveals a critical evolution in the use of synthetic media; it is no longer merely a tool for foreign interference or outright deception, but is being co-opted as a potent, albeit dangerous, form of public discourse. 

A newly arisen dispute that consists of accusations against the women’s football team has turned out to be the trigger for a much larger online wave using AI-generated images to depict the alleged players. Right after a sports media outlet stated that some players are engaged in the same marriage, several YouTube channels not only promptly seized the opportunity of the topic’s virality but also ran AI-generated pictures of the women in the act of kissing while dressed in the national team’s shirt as a part of their promotion. The whole thing, indeed, was done with the fake visuals being used as the main reason for the public outrage and engagement. The swiftness of the dissemination of the content shows just how easily social issues can be manipulated when combined with synthetic media, as the result is more division of opinions and less trust in the team and the media channel. 

Citizens are now leveraging this technology to create and disseminate exaggerated, AI-generated caricatures of their leaders to voice dissent and critique government performance on pressing economic, political, and social issues, signaling a new frontier in digital political expression.

During this period, the Tikvah editorial team identified a significant surge in information disorder, characterized by widespread hate speech and meticulously crafted disinformation. We verified and debunked a series of false claims, including images purporting to show students in Addis Ababa wearing Egyptian symbols, a clear attempt to inflame geopolitical rivalries. Similarly, a synthetic image falsely depicting Ethiopian migrants traveling to Saudi Arabia circulated widely, alongside dangerous, unfounded rumors of a Marburg virus outbreak within the country. These examples represent a deliberate campaign to exploit sensitive issues, from national identity and migration to public health,
threatening to erode social cohesion and fuel inter-community distrust.