Viral Time magazine cover with image of Muhoozi Kainerugaba, son of Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni, is fake

An image of what appears to be the cover of the US news magazine Time is circulating on Facebook, featuring Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni’s son Muhoozi Kainerugaba.

The cover shows Kainerugaba in military uniform. The stripes and bars on his chest seem to indicate high military rank. It has been dated “April 2023”.

The strapline on the cover reads: “The most loved African Army General of all time he is refered to as an inspirational Pan-Africanist and a Generational Leader Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba of Uganda.”

Kainerugaba was the commander of the land forces in the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces, but was dropped from the position after controversial tweets about Kenya in 2022. He was, however, promoted to the rank of general and remains a senior presidential adviser for special operations.

But did Time feature him on the cover of its April 2023 edition? We checked.

Fake cover

The poor writing on the magazine cover is the first sign that it is fabricated. It's unlikely an internationally respected publication like Time would publish a cover with random capitalisation, a spelling error and missing punctuation marks.

The magazine has published guides on how readers can identify fake covers. One way is to check if a cover exists in the Time vault, a section of its website where all Time covers are displayed.  We checked for an edition featuring Kainerugaba and came out empty. 

Two editions were published in April 2023 – the magazine is published twice a month. The issue published on 10 April featured Puerto Rican rapper Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, also known as Bad Bunny, on the cover. The 24 April/1 May edition featured fingerprint art on the cover.

While each issue of Time usually shows date, month and year, the fake version has only the month and year. The cover with Kainerugaba has been fabricated.