On October 7, 2026, the quiet town of Machakos, Kenya, became a meeting point for some of the most important voices in the Horn of Africa. Journalists from Kenya, South Sudan and Somalia, representing both mainstream and digital media outlets, gathered for a three-day regional workshop hosted by the IGAD Leadership Academy. The occasion was not simply a training session; it was a response to a growing crisis in democratic life: the rapid spread of misinformation. As the room filled with editors, reporters, fact-checkers and digital content creators, there was a shared understanding that the craft of journalism was being…

The annual conference on foreign information manipulation opened in Vilnius this week under a heavy, unspoken cloud. The venue was ready, the panels were set, and the coffee was hot. But the atmosphere among the researchers, journalists, and civil society activists gathering in the Lithuanian capital was more reminiscent of a family reunion trying to avoid a difficult uncle than of a confident community of fact-checkers and democracy defenders. On the agenda was a question that many considered the natural next step for a field that had spent years documenting Russian interference, troll farms, and election meddling: Can the United…