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On 15 February 2021 Nigerian economist Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was announced as the new director general of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Soon after her appointment, a photo of a young girl was shared widely on Nigerian social media platforms and news blogs , with the claim it showed Okonjo-Iweala as a child. In some posts the photo was shown alongside a recent photo of the adult director general. We checked whether these claims were true. Photo from Ghana in 2014 A reverse image search led Africa Check to the earliest version of the photo, published on a street photography blog, Fresh Wall Street , in 2014. Here the photo is credited to photographer Allen Coleman . Coleman told us he took the photo in Ghana in 2014. He said: It is a photo of a random Ghanaian child. It does not have anything to do with the WTO director general. When asked if the photo was of Okonjo-Iweala he said: No. That’s not her. Africa Check also ran an analysis of the image using the open-source tool InVID WeVerify . The metadata for the photo confirms it was taken on 28 July 2014, and edited two days later. Okonjo-Iweala was born on 13 June 1954, and was 60 years old in 2014.
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