PesaCheck was founded in 2016 and was initially focused on verifying financial and other statistical numbers quoted by public figures in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

Now, PesaCheck is Africa's largest misinformation fact-checking initiative, with full-time researchers in 15 African countries who produce over 2,000 debunks annually. These debunks result in over 5 million posts being labeled as harmful or misleading on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. PesaCheck is Meta's fourth largest partner globally and is accredited by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), among others.

PesaCheck fact-checks in two international languages (English and French), as well as in major African languages such as Amharic and Kiswahili. Our ecosystem of tools helps track political promises by politicians (through our Wajibisha/PromiseTracker toolkit), helps unpack budget and census data (through our PesaYetu and TaxClock platforms), and builds machine learning/artificial intelligence tools (such as DebunkBot, discontinued after X's API changes) to help automate verification.

PesaCheck also supports independent CheckDesks in 28 newsrooms and NGOs across the continent.