Will 2025, marked by the next presidential elections, be spared by the scourge of disinformation? This question remains a major uncertainty to be resolved to guarantee serene and credible electoral consultations.

While many Cameroonians feed the hope of a presidential election peaceful in 2025, the horizon, meanwhile, is only gaining concerns in the face of the vertiginous rise in disinformation around this great meeting.

Dissemination of false information on the leaders of political parties, video editing and slanderous photo, manufacturing and circulating of false documents, everything goes there, without completeness, increasing the climate of confusion and fragility. These practices open the door to all kinds of handling, the object of community division and lively social tensions. Social networks, a privileged field of these sterile battles, thus become a space conducive to the climbing of these drifts.

“We must not take for absolute truths, everything we read on social networks. The context is that of the presidential election which arrives, each camp, therefore mobilizes its troops to destroy others and this often at all prices. We saw what happened in 2018, with the manipulations and the tensions we inherited. We must learn from the lessons and better prepare for this election so that the information work returns to journalists, capable of answering their responsibilities as for their dissemination, "explains Patrick Hervé Andela, journalist in Yaoundé.

To understand, you have to go back to history in the presidential election of October 7, 2018. This ballot has left in its wake a cleaved social climate, marked by a dizzying rise in hatred speeches, a perceptible identity withdrawal and a proliferation of false information around the elections, combining slander and lies. This heavy heritage continues, even today, to impregnate Cameroonian public life. Seven years have passed, without significant measures being taken to contain this scourge. Certainly, some actions have emerged, in terms of regulation of the information sector, without much impact on reality. Meanwhile, the disinformation continues to spread, taking various forms affecting sensitive subjects, such as clashes between communities or tensions between citizens and administrative authorities. She even gave birth to a stereotypical vocabulary, relating to the sardinard expressions and tontinards, referring, rightly or wrongly, to some taking advantage of the state system and others supposedly excluded from these advantages.

What then reserves the year 2025? What magnitude and dysfunctions could be disinformation in the narration of consistency of social patterns? These questions illustrate the urgency of thinking about suitable solutions to limit the perverse effects of disinformation around this upcoming election. For this, it is necessary to set up a solid device of Fact-Checking to preserve the integrity of the electoral process such as:

✅ Strengthen the training of journalists and the media;

✅ Train journalists in information and images checking techniques, particularly those from social networks;

✅ Create an independent Fact-Checking platform responsible for controlling the information circulating on social networks and in the media, by signaling the false news;

✅ Collaborate with digital platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok and Whatsapp in order to set up specific moderation mechanisms for the election in Cameroon. Algorithms for detecting false news, reporting options for doubtful content as well as restrictions on the spread of viral messages (as was done in Nigeria and Kenya) could be envisaged.

✅ involve official institutions such as Elecam, the CNC and civil society organizations.

To date, no significant approach seems truly noticeable. However, we can note the actions of civil society organizations, mostly initiated towards journalists to better equip them in the face of this phenomenon. However, these isolated efforts will not be enough to stop the spread of disinformation. Only a shared action could make it possible to limit its expansion to the approach of the 2025 presidential election in Cameroon.

 

Christian Essimi