Claim: Fire has engulfed parts of Madina market and bus station in Accra.
Verdict: False. Using digital tools, DUBAWA found that the video circulating on social media to support the claim is about a fire incident in Guinea, not Ghana.
Full Text
Social media posts such as this on Instagram, this on X, and this and this on YouTube claim fire engulfed part of the Madina market and bus station in Accra.
The claims were made days after recent fire outbreaks at the Saglemi Affordable House project and Kantamanto market in Accra, suggesting a strange spate of fire outbreaks in Ghana.
More than 20,000 people have been reached with the claim, and some users have responded with comments such as “Ei this is becoming unbecoming hmm” and “Ei everywhere Dey burn now” to suggest they believe the claim.
In the 18-second video, the language of communication used by young men frantically working to salvage items from the fire was noted to be foreign to Ghana. This prompted DUBAWA to fact-check the claim.
Verification
DUBAWA manually reviewed the video many times to identify relevant clues about the location, and noted that one of the vehicles in the video had a registration plate that was foreign to Ghana.
This information supports the hypothesis that the video is not from Ghana.
After multiple reverse image searches, DUBAWA found that the video had been shared by Gossip.CI, an Ivorian blog, which labelled it as coming from Guinea.
Based on the lead, the researcher assessed a list of 15 major news websites in Guinea and visited each of them.
On three websites, Guineematin.com, Guineenews.org, and Lelynx.net they had publications about a fire incident at Madina bus station in Conakry, Guinea.
On Guineamatin.com, for instance, it is reported that a “fire broke out this Friday, January 3, 2025, at around 4 p.m., at the bus station of Madina, the largest market in Guinea.”
The report further said Elhadj Ousmane Horoya Sylla, secretary general of the Guinean Transport and General Mechanics Trade Union, said, “The fire started in a container containing flammable goods and products, such as juice. Next to it was a vehicle loaded with petrol and two minibuses. When the fire spread, it was not possible to control the flames.”
Crisis24, an international organisation focused on making experience-based security risk management services accessible, also published an article about the impact of the fire in Guinea.
A Guinea-based Facebook page, La Nature du Fouta, shared videos from the fire incident, such as this and this.
Marché Madina is a very popular market in Guinea and is reported to be one of the biggest in West Africa.
In Ghana, the Madina market is one of the largest markets in the capital, Accra.
Conclusion
The video being shared to claim a fire outbreak at Madina bus station in Accra is of a fire incident at Madina in Conakry, Guinea. There was confusion around the name. The fire incident at Marché Madina in Guinea was mistakenly assumed to have happened at Madina market in Accra.