FALSE: These images aren’t from Mauritius’ first gay wedding
This Facebook post claiming to show the first gay wedding in Mauritius is FALSE.
The post is accompanied by three images featuring France’s President Emmanuel Macron and the Prime Minister (PM) of Mauritius Navinchandra Ramgoolam. The first image shows Macron seemingly writing in a book, the second shows Macron and Ramgoolam shaking hands, and the third shows the two leaders posing with Mauritius’ President Dharam Gokhool.
But is the photo a representation of the first gay marriage in the country?
A reverse search of the images led PesaCheck to posts bearing similar images that reported on Macron’s visit to Mauritius in November 2025, as reported here, here, here and here.
The Mauritian PM also shared some images from the visit on his Facebook page.
At the time, Macron was in the country for a two-day official visit where he, Ramgoolam and Gokhool received honours tied to their countries’ relations, establishing that the visit was not a wedding.
Moreover, Macron has been married to his wife Brigitte since 2007, while Ramgoolam is married to Veena.
Notably, Mauritius does not recognise same-sex marriages or civil unions, but the island nation decriminalised consensual same-sex relations in October 2023, stating that the “legislation criminalising homosexuality was never an expression of indigenous Mauritian values, but an imposition of the British colonial project.”
Additionally, there are no publicly available records of gay marriages in the country, although there are reports of same-sex Mauritian couples getting married outside the country.
PesaCheck has looked into a Facebook post claiming to show the first gay wedding in Mauritius and found 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.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here's more information on PesaCheck's methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Harriet Ogayo and edited by PesaCheck senior copy editor Mary Mutisya and chief copy editor Stephen Ndegwa.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck managing editor Doreen Wainainah.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water/ sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.