Hundreds of Factcheckers to Defy 2025 Electoral Disinformation in Cameroon

Family Photo on Day 1 of Conference 

The anti hatespeech organisation #DefyHateNow on Wednesday 20th March 2024 signed a press release saying at least 500 participants are expected to attend the second Africa Factchecking Fellowship, AFFCameroon Conference whose first edition was successfully held in November 2022.

In addition to our over 300 trained factchecking fellows the release stated, other guests include: public and private institutions, political parties, diplomatic missions, international and national organisations, higher institutes of learning, media associations and founders of digital platforms with a huge following.

They met in Yaoundé for two days, 27 to 28 March 2024 to initiate a public discourse on addressing the root causes of disinformation, its manifestation and consequences on Cameroon as a whole; exchange notes on best practices to advance fact-checking in Africa with guest experts from Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria based on their countries’ experiences in countering disinformation and online hate speech during election period.

Cameroonians are expected to go to the polls in 2025 for municipal, legislative and presidential elections and it is feared the atmosphere may likely be characterised by fakenews, hatespeech, disinformation, violence both online and offline within politicians, parties, militants and the general population, this to attain political power or fulfil interest. Some persons even forsee an internet shutdown like the case of 2018.

Yaounde, 12 March 2024, Atanga Nji Paul, Cameroon's minister of territorial administration, overseer of political, association and N.G.O activities in the republic signed a press release prohibiting what he referred to as two fake, clandestine political associations, movements put in place by some political leaders in quest of cheap popularity and in defiance of the legal instruments in force in preparation for the 2025 presidential election on basis of illegality. 

The release furthered that the statues of member of parliament or politician does not authorise anyone to defy state authority with impunity, stir up rebellion, make offensive remarks about authorities and exhibit the deliberate intention to constantly undermine public order. 

From the release, one thing is clear, that government is ready to use any means possible to weaken the opposition and maintain the statusquo while the opposition parties are pulling up their sleeves to effectuate a change. Traditional media (radio, TV, newspaper) and social  media (online space) will be one of the main tools these actors will use to sail through with their agendas, thus need begin preparing to counter such negativities that are detrimental to societal peace when the time comes.

Having noticed the proliferation of misleading statements, fabrication of information (photos, videos, deepfake), pseudo accounts, online scams as well as slanderous, hateful and dangerous discourse on social media and in society targeting individuals and/or inter-ethnic groups, in January 2020, DefyHateNow started the Africa Fact-checking Fellowship dubbed #AFFCameroon, a quarterly training program to promote fact-checking, data journalism and digital rights among journalists, bloggers, content creators and community leaders in Africa. 

Ngala Desmond Ngala, Country Project Manager of #DefyHateNow, Founder of Association CivicWatch Cameroon

Ngala Desmond Ngala, Country Project Manager of #defyhatenow for West and Central Africa told attendees at the opening of the conference that "We cannot ignore the lessons of history, taking us back not only to 2018 and the sociopolitical crisis that followed after gesticulations on the social media but also, we will be taking advantage of these to prepare and plan for elections that are coming."

He will later reiterate why his organisation saw the utmost need for the conference; to mobilise relevant stakeholders in view of working towards sociopolitical stability, good governance, transparency, democracy and peace in Cameroon before, during and  after the electoral period coming in 2025. "This conference is therefore intended to setout a roadmap for these factcheckers to take responsibility for content they put online, correct false information they see online and equip them with diverse skills on how to use digital tools to shape elections" added Ngala Desmond

Mr Ntonye Njoya, Technical Advicer to the Board Chair of Elections Cameroon (ELECAM) schooled attendees on "Digital Inclusion, Electoral Integrity and Regulation of Online Communications in Response to Disinformation". Cornered by reporters at the end of his presentation to find out why the choice of topic, he reiterated that it's important to know the differences between misinformation and disinformation. "Our presence here today is to accompany this #DefyHateNow's brilliant innitiative which we are commending and we'll do our best to bring together all the stakeholders so that they understand the importance of combatting disinformation in the electoral process in view of consolidating Cameroon's democracy" he ended, this, after having clarified that with misinformation, the author may have no intentions to harm but disinformation is done with an intention to harm.

Ntonye Njoya, Technical Advicer to the Board Chair of Elections Cameroon (ELECAM)

Jabi Katy Chale and Mbaku Jude are fellows that have undergone at least a couple of #DefyHateNow's trainings on factchecking and hatespeech mitigation. Jabi wants that at the end of the day, kids should be raised in a conducive environment void of prejudice and hate for them on the basis of their background. To her "We may organise thousands of workshops and conferences to fight hatespeech but it will never stop if we don't trace it from the parental level"

Her colleague Jude is Editor in Chief at a Buea based religious media organ, Divine Mercy Radio and Television. As host of mostly political debate programs, he said "I am going to multiply my efforts in ensuring that I bring on set credible stakeholders in very specific areas, most especially in the area of elections to chat on issues that will help our population come out of the ills of propaganda, misinformation, disinformation and other forms of fakenews."

Thanks to funding from the German government through the Foreign Office, the #DefyHateNow initiative was introduced to Cameroon in 2018, working on mobilising Civic Action against Hatespeech, Violence and Violent Extremism online and offline. The initiative by r0g_agency for Open Culture and Critical Transformation is implemented in Cameroon by a youth-led organisation known as Civic Watch.

The second edition of the AFFCameroon Conference that was characterised by panel discusions, master classes and paper presentations recorded a resounding success thanks to support from partners like MTN Cameroon, 237CHECK, the Cameroon National Youth Council, the Association des Bloggeurs Canerounais, StopIntox and others. The trainees have returned to their respective regions to begin putting the lessons learnt into practice so that social stability is maintained even with elections especially as in the advent of any unrest stemming from the ills they were taught to fight against, they too will suffer.