Amharic Fake News Detection System. This application leverages NLP to detect whether news in Amharic is fake or real!
# 🛡️ Amharic Fake News Detection System
A comprehensive machine learning system for detecting fake news in **Amharic (አማርኛ)** text, featuring specialized text preprocessing for Ethiopic script, multiple classification models, a FastAPI backend, and a modern Next.js web interface.
Live Demo • Report
---
## � Table of Contents
- Overview
- Features
- Project Structure
- Model Performance
- Data Pipeline
- Installation
- Usage
- API Reference
- Technology Stack
- Dataset
- Contributing
- References
---
## 🎯 Overview
The spread of misinformation in Amharic-language social media poses significant challenges to Ethiopian and global Amharic-speaking communities. This project addresses this challenge by providing an end-to-end solution for detecting fake news in Amharic text using classical machine learning techniques.
### Key Highlights
- **Language-Specific Preprocessing**: Custom normalization rules for Ethiopic script (Fidel) handling phonologically similar characters
- **Multi-Model Ensemble**: Four trained classifiers providing diverse predictions with confidence scores
- **Production-Ready API**: RESTful API with CORS support for seamless integration
- **Interactive Web Interface**: Modern, responsive UI with real-time analysis and visualization
---
## ✨ Features
### 🔤 Amharic Text Preprocessing
- **Character Normalization**: Unifies phonologically equivalent Ethiopic characters (e.g., ሀ/ሐ/ሓ/ኀ → ሀ)
- **Noise Removal**: Eliminates URLs, HTML tags, English text, emojis, and special characters
- **Geez Number Handling**: Removes traditional Ethiopic numerals (፩፪፫...)
- **Text Cleaning**: Handles elongated words, extra whitespace, and leading/trailing spaces
### 🤖 Machine Learning Models
| Model | Description |
| ----------------------- | ------------------------------------------ |
| **Logistic Regression** | Linear classifier, best overall accuracy |
| **Decision Tree** | Rule-based class …