Impact of deepfakes in Lesotho: When the king suddenly lies

The warning came on June 25: “Several institutions are deceiving the public and claiming to be authorized by the Central Bank,” said the website of the same Central Bank of Lesotho. Advertisements for fraudulent investment offers quickly spread across the country's social media. The central bank “strongly recommended” avoiding such offers.

Meanwhile, other fraudsters cloned the websites of well-known national companies such as Letšeng Diamonds to deceive unemployed youth with fake job offers.

Just a few months earlier, a deepfake video of Lesotho's King Letsie III was released. went viral on Facebook and WhatsApp. In it, the monarch allegedly advertised a state-sponsored investment that promised weekly payouts of 19,320 Lesotho loti - the equivalent of around 1,025 euros. The King's Office, Police and Ministry of Information launched a hasty counter-campaign.

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And Information Minister Nthati Moorosi was also the target of a deepfake. A video released on June 19 allegedly showed her in a fit of rage during a television show. The post also contained manipulated statements from the opposition leader in parliament.

Every day, Facebook feeds in Lesotho are flooded with AI-generated scams and synthetic hoaxes, often targeting prominent figures. The content spread largely unhindered.

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In the country, which is characterized by high youth unemployment, the production of disinformation has become a source of income. Poverty fuels the cybercriminal gig economy. This is also why disinformation is spreading at high speed in Lesotho, especially on platforms such as Facebook, Whatsapp and Tiktok, says Kananelo Boloetse, news editor of the local newspaper Newsday.

Misinformation spreads within minutes via anonymous accounts or fake appearances by media companies.

Local editorial teams work under considerable financial and time pressure. Facts are therefore rarely checked comprehensively before an article is published, says Nicole Tau, country director of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) in Lesotho. Thorough verifications usually occur during larger investigative research - or to limit damage after an unverified article has already been distributed.

“Our role is no longer just to report events, but to verify claims before publication and quickly debunk falsehoods,” says journalist Boloetse.

Only around half of Lesotho's population uses the internet regularly. Many people continue to get information via traditional FM radio. But the broadcasters also face new challenges. They “sometimes have difficulty recognizing false claims on social media and then repeat them,” says Boloetse. Viral, unconfirmed information reached the FM frequencies from social media.

In many places, the African media landscape is underfunded, polarized and structurally under pressure. Global tech platforms are capturing a growing share of advertising revenue. At the same time, Western fact-checking concepts have their limits in countries with low digital penetration: they often require a high level of digital literacy, widespread smartphone use and reliable internet access - conditions that do not exist across the board in Lesotho.

The digital information order follows a geopolitical hierarchy. Regulations, infrastructure and business models of the digital age are largely shaped in the technology centers of China and in Silicon Valley in California. The rural areas of the Global South bear some of the consequences. A new form of digital colonialism is emerging.

The Global North has greater resources to develop AI regulation, deploy content moderation systems and require technology companies to combat abusive content. Countries in the Global South, on the other hand, often rely on technologies and rules that were developed outside their own societies. This also influences the perspective of the world: information and stories often come from Western sources. This puts additional pressure on the credibility of local media. A new “information disorder” is growing in Africa that is distorting the formation of public opinion. And Lesotho is no exception.

At the UN Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence Governance in Geneva on July 6 and 7, 2026, Lesotho's Deputy Prime Minister Nthoeng Justina Majara referred to the country's 2025 National AI Policy and the African Union AI Strategy. AI governance should not only be about risk management, but must also enable innovation and capacity building, she said. Kanono Ramashamole, Information Permanent Secretary said Lesotho not only wants to be a user of AI technologies, but to help shape the strategies, platforms and digital foundations that will shape the future of AI.

But meanwhile, the structural challenges are worsening as the reach of Big Tech platforms grows. Corporations are increasingly producing content with African characters, local names and regional themes. This puts them in direct competition with local media companies and changes the local media markets. This content is distributed via global streaming and platform structures that are easily accessible via social networks such as Facebook.

The challenge for African societies is therefore not just to distinguish between true and false. It is also about the question of who controls the technical systems through which information is disseminated, weighted and made visible. When platforms, algorithms and AI applications are predominantly developed outside of Africa, dependencies arise that extend far beyond the media world. Disinformation is then not just a problem of individual false reports, but rather an expression of a power imbalance in the global information order. Lesotho shows how quickly this gap can spread to the most remote regions of a society.