Old video showing a religious ritual in Senegal shared as the visuals of slave markets in Africa - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
August 31, 2023
A video is being shared on social media claiming it is the visuals of women being auctioned at a slave market in an Islamic nation in Africa. Many users were sharing the video claiming that the video shows a slave market in Ethiopia. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video showing a slave market in Africa.
Fact: The video shows the visuals of a religious ritual that usually practised by the Serer ethnoreligious community in the West African nation of Senegal. The video shared in the post was taken during the Ndut initiation rituals at Djilass village in Senegal in December 2022. The video does not depict a slave market in Africa. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
On reverse image search of the screenshots of the video, a video showing similar visuals was found published by a YouTube channel in 2017.  This YouTube channel described it as the Ndut dance demonstration in a village.
When we searched for further sources using relevant keywords on the internet, we found a video showing similar visuals, but taken from another angle, on a TikTok handle page ‘lang.simal.tv’. The TikTok handle published this video reporting it as the visuals of Ndut rituals performed at the Djillas village in Senegal in 2022.
The Ndut is a rite of passage as well as a religious education commanded by Serer Culture that every Serer (an ethnic group found in Senegal, the Gambia, and Mauritania) must go through once in their lifetime. The purpose of this Ndut initiation rite is to mark the transition from childhood to adulthood. The Ndut initiation rites include the circumcision of Serer boys and the initiation of Serer girls through njam or ndam (the tattooing of the gums). The males who undergo circumcision in the Ndut initiation rites are called njuli. More details related to the Ndut initiation rites can be found here.
Upon searching for further details, a video showing similar visuals was found published by the ‘Ndindy Fall Tv’ on 26 December 2022. This news channel published the video with the description, “Ndoutt from Djilasse: first images with nearly 600 ndiouli”. From all these pieces of evidence, it can be concluded that the video shared in the post shows the visuals of a religious ritual in Senegal, not the visuals of a slave market in Africa.
To sum it up, an old video showing a religious ritual in Senegal was shared as the visuals of slave markets in Africa.