| Summary: | In Africa, many businesses depend on word-of-mouth, and they rely increasingly on social media. For these businesses, fake news can be devastating. The continent’s dominant youth population is a main target for foreign and local businesses operating on the continent. They access most of their news on the Internet, especially social media. Internet platforms are an easy and relatively inexpensive means to add comments and criticism that whether true or not, can dominate online conversations. Such information is easy to manipulate to mischievous ends. Thus, online disinformation is becoming a matter of great concern for African businesses.
This paper focuses on the more important issue of online disinformation, defined as the purposeful sharing of false information on the Internet with the intent to mislead or cause harm, as opposed to misinformation, which similarly involves sharing information that may be false, but without the intent to mislead or harm. Businesses are increasingly targets of disinformation, sometimes with devastating consequences. Yet there is relatively little material on this in the literature and media, and even less with respect to African firms. This article aims to fill this gap by addressing the following questions: How do African firms or foreign firms operating on the continent deal with online disinformation? What strategies are most effective in combating corporate fake news in Africa? And what pitfalls should African firms avoid with respect to online disinformation?
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