Disinformation Detection Platform — Penplusbytes' Real-Time AI Monitoring for Ghana's 2024 Election

Ahead of Ghana's December 2024 general election, the media-technology organisation Penplusbytes deployed its Disinformation Detection Platform (DDP), an AI and network-analysis tool that tracked, collected and analysed social media content in real time. The project ran under the EU-co-funded AHEAD Africa programme, in partnership with the Ghana Fact-Checking Coalition and the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO), and worked alongside Ghana's Electoral Management Bodies to coordinate on electoral-integrity issues.

On election day, the platform flagged close to 1,900 election-related incidents, including 38 confirmed disinformation posts on X alone, feeding a rapid verification-and-debunking workflow run with fact-checking partners. Around the election, Penplusbytes also ran a youth-engagement track, training over 400 young volunteers across conferences in Accra and Tamale to help spread verified information and counter false narratives peer-to-peer.

Penplusbytes subsequently published a first Disinformation Index Report extending the same monitoring approach to Côte d'Ivoire, Mali and Burkina Faso — evidence the model travels across West African election contexts. As a civil-society-led platform working through informal partnerships with electoral bodies rather than one operated directly by the state, its long-term institutionalisation within Ghana's public electoral administration remains donor-dependent and not yet formalised.

Read the full analysis: https://penplusbytes.org/defending-democracy-penplusbytes-launches-disinformation-detection-platform-ddp-to-monitor-and-combat-election-disinformation/