BT FACTCHECK

FALSE: Britain’s New Prime Minister Is Not From The Luo Tribe

PESACHECKNov 20, 2022400

A tweet claiming that new British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is from the Luo tribe of Kenya is FALSE.

The tweet reads: “Now Britain has elected a Luo Prime Minister, Just like US did. Next ni sisi from Mt Kenya [Next is we from Mt Kenya].”

On Monday, 24 October 2022, Sunak won the race, becoming the third United Kingdom Prime Minister in 2022, following the resignation of Liz Truss, who had replaced Boris Johnson in September.

Sunak had one competitor — House of Commons leader and former Defence minister Penny Mordaunt — who got 30 votes against the new premier’s 150.

While Sunak’s father was born in Kenya, he is not from the Luo tribe. The roots of the new British PM are in Punjab, India, from where his grandparents migrated to Kenya and Tanzania.

Sunak, a Hindu and former British Chancellor of the Exchequer, was born in 1980 in the port city of Southampton, United Kingdom. His father, Yashvir Sunak, was born in Kenya while his mother, Usha Sunak, was born in Tanzania. The parents were married in Southampton, where they had migrated in the 1960s.

PesaCheck has looked into a tweet claiming that Britain’s new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is from the Luo tribe of Kenya and finds it to be FALSE.

This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.

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PesaCheck is a pioneering verification initiative that is kickstarting fact-checking across Africa. Initially focused on verifying the financial and other statistical numbers quoted by public figures in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, PesaCheck is now Africa’s largest with full-time fact-checkers in 12 countries in both east and west Africa, as well as across the Sahel.