Pan-African communications consultancy APO Group has partnered with Opera to “boost the prominence of truthful news articles” related to the spread of COVID-19 across Africa, both companies said Thursday in a joint press release.
The collaboration will see the APO Group Newsroom website integrated into the Opera News platform, providing around 200 million Opera users in the region with official information from trusted and reputable online sources.
The goal is to “reduce the consumption of misleading news articles that include deliberate disinformation about the pandemic” in different African countries, they said. “Providing the public with accurate information about COVID-19 is crucial, especially as Africa′s coronavirus response is regularly obstructed by fake news,” noted Nicolas Pompigne-Mognard, APO Group Founder and Chairman.
For more than two months, APO Group has been collecting and distributing press releases and official statements from health ministries in Africa, the World Health Organization, the WHO Regional Office for Africa, and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).
More than 3,000 press releases are now available for people using both the Opera Mini browser and Opera News. “Our partnership with APO Group… will benefit hundreds of millions of users who search for COVID-19 information every day on the Opera Mini browser and the Opera News app,” said Jørgen Arnesen, EVP of Mobile Browsers at Opera.
Users who want to read the APO Group feed of news releases on the Opera Mini browser can tap on the Coronavirus channel in the browser’s newsfeed. Once there, they will easily identify the news releases as they appear under the APO Group Newsroom.
Those using the Opera News app can also tap on the Coronavirus category in the app or follow the brand-new APO Group button in the Following section. The APO Group follow button in the Opera News app is currently available in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, and Tanzania.
“The circulation of both misinformation and rumors about the virus poses an enormous risk to the public, which is why APO Group and Opera are proud to team up to disseminate reliable and critically important information to the public,” the companies added.
