Burkina Faso recently unveiled the creation of a new company aimed at connecting the country’s main capitals by rail. Following this announcement, viral posts on Facebook relayed the video of an impressive machine laying tracks, suggesting that the scene is taking place in Burkina Faso. This is false: these images, already diverted several times, show a railway construction project in Malaysia.
“Burkina Faso launches into the manufacturing and laying of rails… Long live AES“, claims the author of a viral Facebook post relayed more than 10,000 times since August 24, 2024, video in support (archived link here).
By mentioning the acronym “AES“, he is referring here to the Alliance of Sahel States, a coalition created on September 16, 2023 by Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger in order to establish, in particular, a collective defense architecture.
These three countries have also decided to leave the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
In the video currently being shared on social media, mainly by accounts based in Senegal and Burkina Faso, we see an imposing yellow machine laying down concrete sleepers intended to support the rails of a railway track.
Several workers, safety vests on their backs and helmets screwed on their heads, are busy on either side of the machine.
These images, lasting 2’04”, began circulating on the web a few days after the announcement, relayed by the Burkina Information Agency — the official press agency of Burkina Faso — of the creation of “Faso-Rail, a new company that will connect provincial capitals by train” (archived link here).
However, they have no connection with this West African country.
As we demonstrated in a previous fact-check article, while misleading messages attributed the same video to the progress of the Abidjan metro works (Côte d’Ivoire), this sequence was actually filmed in Malaysia (see fact-check article here).
These images were also hijacked by other Facebook accounts that claimed to have filmed them in India (archived link here).
A video filmed in Malaysia
To trace their origin, we used the InVID-WeVerify tool to generate different screenshots of the video, from which we conducted a reverse image search.
In particular, it led us to this post published on X on January 9, 2024, by an account administered by travel bloggers, called “SharingTravel” (archived link here).
“Malaysia’s East Coast Railway Company has started laying tracks“, can be read in the caption of the 17-second video sequence, in English.
The latter is composed of the same images as those currently circulating on social networks. We can recognize the yellow locomotive, topped with a red sign with a blue inscription, in Chinese letters.
A little further on, we also find the name of the construction company “China Communications Construction” on one side of the craft, in both English and Chinese letters.
A keyword search, conducted in English using the terms “Malaysia+east+coat+rail“(Malaysia+east+coast+rail), led us to a post published on the Malaysia Rail Line website: an entity of the Ministry of Finance (MOF Inc.) of Malaysia responsible for administering the implementation of the East Coast Rail Link (ECRL).
In the images that we are checking, we can also see the logo of this organization.
“The 665km East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) will traverse the east coast states of Kelantan, Terengganu and Pahang before connecting to the Klang Valley on the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia. As a national infrastructure, the ECRL will connect cities and towns and improve public transport along its rail network.“, we can read there, in English.
According to the Railway Technology website, which specializes in infrastructure construction news, the project will be carried out in partnership with the China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) (archived link here).
“Construction of the ECRL project began with groundbreaking in Kuantan, Malaysia in August 2017, but work was suspended in 2018 due to financial reasons. Construction resumed in July 2019, with completion scheduled for December 2026.“, indicates a post published on the site in February 2024.
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