As Cameroon gears up for a crucial presidential election in October, a leading digital rights organization, Paradigm Initiative (PIN), has urged the government and other stakeholders to play their part in ensuring a smooth process.
From government keeping the internet on to election-tasked institutions employing digital monitoring tools and citizens getting involved and ensuring transparency and accountability in the electoral process the organization notes that all hands are needed on deck.
PIN’s Executive Director, Gbenga Sesan, made the call at a press conference in Yaounde on Tuesday, April 15, 2025. He was speaking after a meeting with election officials, information technology experts, telecommunication regulators, civil society organizations and digital rights activists.
Operating in over 20 African countries, PIN aims to deploy its Digital Rights and Elections Monitor (DREAM) initiative to Cameroon ahead of the 2025 presidential vote.
The PIN Executive Director disclosed that governments have embarked on a mission to manipulate the digital space to crush dissents and opposition. This includes paying officials to create content, comment on, like and share content that paint a beautiful picture of the state beyond what really exists.
Sesan urged Yaounde to ensure open and uninterrupted access to the internet before during and after the forthcoming elections and also cease to use vague or verbally broad laws to criminalize legitimate online expressions and dissents.
“Refrain from arbitrary surveillance or online harassment of journalists, activists and other citizens,” the PIN Executive Director said in a message directed to the government, which he advised to proactively disclose election related information including voter lists, candidate details and key timelines in all accessible formats.
While admitting that many people have lost interest in elections because of alleged manipulations often, he urged Cameroonians take part in defining their nation by obtaining a voter’s card, monitoring the electoral process before, during and after the polls.
Room for manipulation
With the possibility of the ruling party using some instruments of the state in its favour in delicate places like the crisis-stricken English-speaking regions of Cameroon, Sesan urged journalists to strife to report all the data before, during and after the elections.
“The principle is very simple: allow people in the places where you have strengths to vote and suppress votes in the places where they are likely to vote against you,” he added, citing the case of Nigeria.
“The role of the media is very simple: You have the data, you have the numbers; please, from now release the numbers. What has happened in Buea, Bamenda, Yaounde, across Cameroon? What are the voter numbers? What is the trend? When you show that in advance, what you do is you also empower citizens to know that there’s a history in voters’ participation. It is the role of the media to ensure that incidents are captured and reported,” Sesan pointed out.
He urged citizens and organisations to report cases of rights abuses by network providers, telecommunication regulators and the government citing the case of a lawyer in South Sudan who took a telecommunication company and the government to court for shutting down the internet. The lawyer won the case and the internet was restored to him alone because he had fought alone.
Telecoms operators should uphold users’ rights
Sesan called on the Telecommunications Regulatory Board, and network operators to maintain transparency around any government’s request for shutdowns, or data access and commit to upholding user rights.
“Guarantee equal access to digital infrastructure, especially in rural areas. Engage us, civil societies, to build trust and ensure accountability in the digital space,” the PIN Executive Director said in a message directed to the telecoms regulator and network providers in the country.
He also urged politicians and candidates to refrain from spreading or encouraging propaganda and fake news on the internet.
To civil societies and media professionals, he called for professionalism and cross sector collaboration to promote a safe digital environment.
PIN is working with community-based organization, Civic Watch via their #defyhatenow initiative to clean the digital space in Cameroon.
