BY: Mustapha Lawal
When President Paul Biya signed the decree fixing Cameroon’s presidential election for October 12, 2025, it set in motion not only the machinery of a high-stakes political contest but also an unprecedented wave of digital manipulation. From the start of the campaign season in January through the tense post-election weeks of October, the political temperature in the country was mirrored, and often amplified, by disinformation circulating on social media.
The presidential election took place on Sunday, 12th October 2025, and saw incumbent Paul Biya, the world’s oldest ruler at 92, widely expected to extend his 43-year grip on power despite an energised opposition pushing for change. His opponents include former government spokesperson Issa Tchiroma, 76, who has galvanised large crowds demanding an end to Biya’s long tenure and drawn endorsements from a platform of some opposition parties and civic groups. With over 8 million registered voters in Cameroon and 32,684 tally sheets from the country’s 360 districts, the final results are expected on 26 October, and there are no exit polls.
However, months before a single ballot was cast, online networks began laying the groundwork for confusion. Fake communiqués, recycled conflict footage, and fabricated election results blended with genuine political messages to produce an information fog that blurred reality for millions of Cameroonians. The 2025 presidential election, already marked by questions of legitimacy and security, thus became a textbook example of how digital misinformation can shape political outcomes and post-election narratives.
This article draws on findings from FactCheckAfrica’s Social Media Landscape Analysis (Jan–Jul 2025), which mapped the dominant narratives and disinformation risks ahead of Cameroon’s presidential election.
Credit: Kak (France) – Cartooning for Peace
The Fake ELECAM Communiqué: Seeds of Distrust
In July 2025, a document purporting to come from Elections Cameroon (ELECAM) spread rapidly across WhatsApp groups and Facebook pages. It claimed that the North-West and South-West regions, the heart of the Anglophone crisis, had been excluded from participating in the presidential election for “security reasons”.
Within hours, screenshots of the fake communiqué were shared thousands of times, accompanied by angry commentary and despairing memes. For many in those regions, long accustomed to feelings of marginalisation, the claim felt believable. It took ELECAM and independent fact-checkers days to clarify that the document was entirely fabricated. By then, the damage was done.
The fake notice deepened scepticism among Anglophone voters and reinforced separatist calls for boycotts, as evidenced in the social media monitoring landscape analysis conducted by FactCheckAfrica ahead of the polls. In digital terms, it marked the first major disinformation flashpoint of the 2025 election, one that targeted the legitimacy of the process before voting even began.
Deepfakes in the Campaign: When AI Meets Politics
As the campaigns intensified in August and September, another layer of manipulation emerged. Researchers from FactSpace Africa identified that several campaign posters and short videos circulating on social media featured AI-generated imagery. In one widely shared image attributed to the opposition Social Democratic Front (SDF), an unnaturally uniform crowd appeared behind the candidate, later confirmed to be an AI composite.
The use of synthetic visuals signalled a new era in political propaganda in Cameroon. For ordinary social media users, these images blurred the line between authentic enthusiasm and manufactured support. For the first time, deepfake-style disinformation entered mainstream political communication in the country, raising urgent questions about the capacity of regulators, journalists, and fact-checkers to detect such content during critical democratic moments.
Credit: El Marto (Burkina Faso) – Cartooning for Peace
Election Day and the War of Numbers
When Cameroonians went to the polls on October 12, 2025, the online space was already primed for chaos. Even before official tallies began, multiple unverified results platforms appeared on social media, claiming to display real-time figures allegedly sourced from polling stations. Some of these sites presented opposition victories; others showed sweeping wins for the ruling party.
The government quickly issued warnings about “fraudulent digital platforms”, reminding the public that only the Constitutional Council could legally announce results. Yet, screenshots and voice notes quoting these false tallies flooded Telegram groups and Facebook feeds, feeding both hope and outrage.
Disinformation during this period became less about creating false stories and more about weaponising uncertainty. With the official silence that often accompanies vote counting, online speculation filled the void, and misinformation thrived in that vacuum.
The Self-Proclaimed Victory
Two days after the vote, opposition candidate Issa Tchiroma Bakary declared that he had won the presidency. Standing before cameras and supporters, he urged President Biya to concede defeat. His announcement was broadcast live and immediately echoed across social platforms.
Within hours, hashtags such as #TchiromaPresident and #CameroonHasDecided proclaiming Tchiroma’s victory trended on X (formerly Twitter), while rival groups labelled the claim “fake news” and “an attempted coup by narrative”. The government swiftly countered, asserting through Le Monde Afrique that the opposition “did not win” the election and warning against premature celebrations. The problem was not just the claim itself but how quickly it blurred the line between political messaging and misinformation.
In a context where trust in institutions was already fragile, the competing versions of “truth”, one from the opposition and another from the government, fragmented the public sphere. For many Cameroonians, what they believed about the election’s outcome depended not on official data but on which digital community they belonged to.
Credit: Glez (Burkina Faso) – Cartooning for Peace
Fire and Flames: The Dschang Incident
As tension mounted, a dramatic event further fuelled the digital storm. On October 15, local media reported that a ruling party office in Dschang had been set on fire. Videos quickly surfaced online, some showing thick smoke and shouting crowds. Yet as those clips spread, so did misinformation: some posts claimed the fire was an opposition attack; others alleged it was staged by the ruling party to justify arrests.
Subsequent verification by The Washington Post confirmed the fire but noted that many of the widely circulated clips were misdated or unrelated to the Dschang incident. However, in the online sphere, corrections rarely travel as far as the original lie. The imagery of flames became a powerful symbol, recycled in hundreds of posts to portray a nation “burning after a stolen election”.
Here, disinformation did not invent the event; it distorted it, using a real episode of unrest as raw material for polarising narratives.
The Aftermath: Between Silence and Speculation
In the days that followed, the air was thick with rumour. Voice notes claiming that “military trucks were moving toward Yaoundé” spread on WhatsApp, often with no evidence. Others circulated fabricated “letters” from foreign embassies supposedly calling for Biya’s resignation. Meanwhile, diaspora networks recycled older footage of protests and passed it off as recent demonstrations against the alleged election fraud.
Gathered on October 17, 2025, in Yaoundé, the twenty parties that supported Paul Biya’s candidacy united within the G20, held a press conference during which they denounced Issa Tchiroma’s self-proclamation of victory, warned against any actions that could threaten civil peace, and demanded the suspension of any final proclamation of the results until the full counting of the tally sheets is completed.
The coalition called for calm, warning that unverified information could provoke unnecessary violence. Despite these appeals, mistrust lingered, showing how difficult it is to put out a digital fire once it starts. Their appeal underscored a sobering reality: in Cameroon’s 2025 election, the struggle for truth became as important as the contest for power.
How FactCheckAfrica’s MyAIFactChecker Empowered Citizens
Amid the fog of digital manipulation, MyAIFactChecker, the multilingual fact-checking assistant, available both on web and on WhatsApp, developed by FactCheckAfrica, became an ally for Cameroonians trying to separate fact from fiction. During the election period, thousands of users turned to the AI-powered tool to verify viral screenshots, videos, and political statements circulating on WhatsApp and X (formerly Twitter).
By cross-referencing claims against credible databases, election commission updates, and verified media reports, MyAIFactChecker provided near-real-time analysis and simplified verdicts in English and French. In a media landscape saturated with falsehoods, the chatbot’s intuitive interface gave citizens, a rare sense of agency, allowing them to question, verify, and share authentic information within their networks.
Beyond individual fact-checks, the tool served as an early-warning system for misinformation trend. Its backend analytics helped identify recurring false narratives, such as fake ELECAM communiqués and AI-generated campaign visuals. This capacity to track and counter emerging disinformation in real time positioned MyAIFactChecker and our currently tested WhatsApp AI Bot, as a digital first responder in an environment where traditional media and electoral institutions struggled to keep pace.
Conclusion
Cameroon’s 2025 presidential election shows how fragile information ecosystems can be during moments of political transition. From fake communiqués and AI-generated images to premature victory claims and misattributed videos, disinformation shaped both perception and participation.
What began as isolated digital falsehoods evolved into a broader narrative war, one fought through memes, hashtags, and voice notes rather than ballots and rallies. Each rumour, each manipulated image, and each misleading post contributed to a widening gap between citizens and institutions. As the Constitutional Council prepares its final validation, one truth remains clear: the battle for accurate information is now central to the battle for democracy.
Editor: Habeeb Adisa
