Claim: DRC President Felix Tshisekedi was once a cab/taxi driver in Brussels 

Source: GhanaFact WhatsApp Chatbot 

Verdict: Manipulated

Researched by Gifty Danso

GhanaFact, through our WhatsApp chatbot, was alerted to an image showing the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Felix Tshisekedi, driving a taxi somewhere in Europe. 

Fig. 1 – Image of DRC President, Felix Tshisekedi as a taxi driver

This fact check seeks to verify the authenticity of the image. 

Fact-check

GhanaFact ran a Google Reverse Image Search on the image and found it appeared online in February 2023 when an X user posted it with a caption: “When President Kagame was leading the armed struggle in Rwanda, Incompetent Felix Tshisekedi was a metered Taxi driver in Brussels. There are levels to #leadership.” 

The photo has also been reshared online (here and here). 

Through image analysis, we also traced the original image which was manipulated to include the DRC president as the cab driver. This image was used by the Brussels Times in a news story about Belgium’s controversial taxi plan. The image from the Brussels Times is credited to “Belga/Dirk Waem” – a staff photographer with Belga News Agency. 

Fig. 2 – Image from Brussels Times story

Our analysis of the two photos led to the following outcomes:

  • The Brussels Times image is what was manipulated to include other features. Principally, the photo of the DRC president was replaced with the original driver.
  • The Uber inscription on the original photo has been erased.
  • The refuse bin is absent in the original photo which presupposes it was inserted into the manipulated image
  • The original photo doesn’t have a TAXI inscription on top of the car, it is also an imposed feature in the manipulated image.
  • The taxi signage on the original image has been replaced, both signages have totally different features 

Fig 3 – Visual comparison of the features of the original and manipulated images

It is worth noting that even though the manipulated image was shared in February 2024 while the Brussels Times used the image in April 2024, GhanaFact found that the image in question has been in circulation since 2015. A variant of the photo was used by an Italian news website.

Aside from the above, all other features in both photos, including buildings, vehicles, a taxi post, and the surroundings present the same elements from both environments. 

Forensic Analysis

GhanaFact also ran the submitted image through InVID Verification Application – a web-based integrated toolset for journalists. We found several parts of the Tshisekedi image appear to have been tampered with.

Fig 4 – Image from the photo forensics analysis platform

InVid Verification Application results

Error Level Analysis: This is produced by recompressing the image as a JPEG of quality 75 and subtracting the new image from the old. The resulting image of differences is then enhanced and displayed. Areas of interest are those with higher values than other similar parts of the image.

Evaluation: Various areas within the image have different compression levels and likely indicate a digital modification.

Median Noise: This is based on isolating the almost-invisible image noise through median filtering. When interpreting the results, areas of interest are those that return higher (i.e. brighter) values than other similar parts of the image. Only similar regions should be compared, i.e. edges should be compared to edges, textures to textures, and uniform regions to uniform regions.

Evaluation: Various areas within the image have brighter values, which likely suggests which areas of the image were altered. 

Congolese fact-checker dismisses the image

Also, a Congolese fact-checker, Rose Mathe, debunked the image and said, “This is wrong. At no point has the president been a taxi man. You just have to check his online biography. He wasn’t a taxi man in a foreign country. It has never been the case.”

GhanaFact accessed a profile of the president by influential Francophone Africa news website, Jeune Afrique (in French), in which it stated that during Tshisekedi’s time in Brussels as a young man, he did menial jobs which included delivering pizza and bar hopping, there is no mention of driving a taxi.

Verdict 

Although as a young man President Felix Tshisekedi had taken on odd jobs (find the report here in French), the current image was doctored and claims that he was a cab driver are false. 

NB: This claim was submitted by a user of the GhanaFact WhatsApp Chatbot.