IN SHORT: A video circulating on social media shows renowned CNN journalist Fareed Zakaria seemingly accusing Kenyan and Ugandan activists of being funded by foreigners to destabilise the region. But the video is fake. The voice is AI-generated and CNN never aired the segment.
A video circulating on TikTok, Instagram, X and YouTube shows US-based journalist Fareed Zakaria apparently addressing tensions between Kenya and Tanzania.
The clip appears to be a segment from Zakaria's weekly CNN show, GPS (Global Public Square), with a caption that reads: "Fareed's Take". It also has a chyron that states: "Not in My Country: Why Tanzania is going after Open Society."
In the video, a voice mimicking Zakaria claims that Tanzanian authorities uncovered a foreign-funded plot involving Kenyan and Ugandan organisers, with alleged links to the southern Africa office of the Open Society Foundations (OSF).
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OSF is a global philanthropic network founded by the financier and philanthropist George Soros in 1993. Initially, it was called the Open Society Institute. (Disclosure: OSF contributed 3% of Africa Check's funding in 2023.)
The video began circulating shortly after the arrest and deportation from Tanzania of Kenya's Boniface Mwangi and Uganda's Agather Atuhaire.
In May 2025, the two activists were reportedly detained by Tanzanian authorities after travelling to the country to attend the trial of opposition leader Tundu Lissu.
Their whereabouts were unknown for several days, prompting concern. At a press conference on 2 June, they said they had been tortured in custody.
But did Zakaria really weigh in on the issue? We checked.
The content has been manipulated, the voice is AI-generated
The video in question does not appear on the CNN website, where the US broadcaster posts all its aired videos.
We used the InVID search tool to extract keyframes from the video and ran them through reverse image search.
This revealed that the clip's first frame was taken from a genuine CNN segment that was aired on 4 May 2025. In that programme, Zakaria discussed US-China trade tensions and not East African politics.
The first three seconds of the circulating video are identical to the one aired on CNN. But from around four seconds in, Zakaria's face disappears and a different audio track plays over unrelated visuals, including footage of the 2024 Gen Z protests in Kenya, images of Tanzania's president Samia Suluhu and clips of Soros.
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There are several indicators in the video that suggest the use of AI-generated voice cloning. At around 12 seconds, the speaker's intonation becomes robotic and the pacing becomes unnatural as they say: "The Kenyan [pause] Gen-Z-led demonstrations that began as a tax revolt [pause] and quickly evolved into a national reckoning."
There are no credible videos, news reports or official statements that link the activists to foreign-funded operations.
Furthermore, there has been no public statement from Tanzanian intelligence that supports the allegations made in the video.
