Founded in 2001, Penplusbytes was created to harness the potential of technology to improve governance and accountability in Africa. Over the years, the organisation has built a strong reputation for leveraging digital tools and innovations to tackle pressing social and civic challenges. Penplusbytes is also a member of the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO), through which they coordinate their electoral work in Ghana.

Through its flagship initiative, the African Elections Project (AEP), Penplusbytes has helped strengthen the credibility of elections in 16 African countries. The AEP empowers both media and citizens to actively engage in and monitor electoral processes, using tools such as offline and online media tracking, network analysis, and digital platforms.

With support from AHEAD Africa, Penplusbytes deploys a Disinformation Detection Platform (DDP), combining AI-powered network analysis with human election observation, to detect, analyse, and mitigate the spread of false information in real-time before, during, and after Ghana’s 2024 elections.

Misleading content from online bots to traditional media threatened to hijack Ghana’s information space during the 2024 elections. In response, with support from AHEAD Africa, Penplusbytes developed and deployed the Disinformation Detection Platform (DDP)—an AI tool that flagged over 10,000 suspicious election-related content and drew on the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO)’s on-ground team for additional verification when needed.

As a result of a pioneering collaboration with the Electoral Commission, the National Elections Security Task Force was able to respond swiftly to several of the 138 incidents verified by Penplusbytes as true, including vote-buying and polling agents voting twice. For the 38 cases of disinformation uncovered, including false claims about muslim Vice-President Bawumia eating pork and drinking whiskey, Penplusbytes worked with media outlets, aired radio spots, and leveraged social media to counter inaccurate content, generating nearly one million impressions.

Real-time monitoring through the DDP cut the average response time to high-risk narratives from over 4 hours to just 47  minutes. The tool has attracted interest amongst African election observers and drawn attention from institutions concerned with cybersecurity, prompting them to formally approach Penplusbytes to explore strategic partnerships on threat mapping and intelligence coordination.

To mobilise the wider public, Penplusbytes ran the #SpotTheFake campaign, encouraging citizens to feel confident in spotting false information. This resulted in users frequently tagging the Ghana Police on X to report disinformation. The DDP proved its value in showing how rapid, live interventions can curb the virality of debunked claims on social media, with ordinary users calling out accounts spreading false narratives. Yet, the persistence of some false narratives underscores that real-time corrections alone aren’t enough and that sustained public education in addition to media and digital literacy remain essential for long-term change.