Social media giant Facebook apologised to Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta after it erroneously flagged his congratulatory message to his Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Museveni.

A statement from the platform said the message posted on Sunday had been mislabelled as false after it carried a photo that had appeared in a separate social media post whose message had turned out to be fake.

“We are aware that our automated systems incorrectly labelled a post from State House Kenya as false,” a Spokesperson from Facebook told The EastAfrican.

“The post was a congratulatory message on HE President Yoweri Museveni’s re-election that featured a picture of the president that had appeared in a previously fact checked article that was flagged as false in December 2019. The issue has been resolved, with the matching error fixed. We are in communication with the State House Kenya.”

The message was flagged after “independent fact-checkers” had noted the information was “false”, Facebook said.