False! Togo president did not hint at joining AES in speech

An X account, Sahel Revolutionary Soldier, on December 15, 2025, shared a video of Togolese President Faure Gnassingbé with a caption that suggested that the president had conceded that Togo would join the Alliance of Sahel States (known by the French acronym AES). 

This post had been viewed 73.6K times with 362 reposts, 1.2K likes and attracted 42 comments at the time of publication, so we fact-checked the claim about Togo joining the AES. 

We traced the video on X to an address by President Gnassingbé at the 9th Pan-African Congress co-organised by the African Union held in Lome between December 8 to 12, 2025. Neither the clip shared on social media nor the president’s entire address mentioned AES or the idea of Togo joining the three-nation bloc.

Read more in this story on GhanaFact: FACT-CHECK: Did Togolese President Faure Gnassingbé announce intention to join AES?