 Distinguish guests. Good afternoon. My name is Joseph Sunny. I'm the Vice President of the Africa Center at the U.S. Institute of Peace. The U.S. Institute of Peace was founded by Congress in 1984 as a non-partisan independent institute with the goal to help prevent, mitigate and resolve conflicts around the world. In Africa, we focused mainly on mitigating the adverse effects of the strategic competition and addressing drivers of fragility such as political instability, violence, extremism, malinformation, disinformation and misinformation as well. We also focused on strengthening networks of peace builders particularly women and youth and also local and regional architectures, peace architectures. With the development and the spread of information technology, unfortunately, we have also seen the spread of misinformation, disinformation and malinformation and therefore exacerbating the existing fragility in some contexts already. As we will hear from our speakers, disinformation is used by local actors to promote their own agendas and political gains, access to resources or suing instability. At the time of growing international competition, disinformation is also used by great powers to advance their own influence and their own agendas. The issue is not unique to one country or the region. It is truly cross-cutting and worldwide and therefore requires our collective attention. But the local solutions and local media, leaders, investigative journalists, those who are widely perceived in their communities to be knowledgeable and trustworthy. The solution will not come from outside. This should be a locally owned approach and strategy. Otherwise we fall, we perpetuate the vicious cycle of misinformation, disinformation and malinformation when this is pushed by illegitimate outside actors. I am pleased to introduce Archibald Henry, Program Officer for Central African Sahelat here at USIP. I am very fortunate to work with Archie and I had few occasions to travel with Archie. It was quite knowledgeable of the continent, I should say. And speaks all the languages spoken on the continent. Archie works on misinformation, disinformation and malinformation and hate speech will most likely help guide the conversations. Archie, please the floor is yours and thank you for being such a wonderful colleague. Thank you. Thank you, Sunny and good afternoon everyone. My name is Archie Henry. I'm delighted to be moderating today's discussion. Thank you to all our guests that are joining us today for this event on confronting disinformation in Central Africa, perspectives from civil society in Chad and the Central African Republic. The event is taking place in both English and in French and we have headsets available with simultaneous interpretation. If you do not understand both languages please feel free to raise your hand and a member of our team will help you have one of those. Thanks as well to those of you joining us online today in the US, in the African continent and elsewhere. Disinformation is shared in a variety of methods in private conversations, in public forums, in print, in media, social media, radio and TV. It affects all segments of society. Inflammatory rhetoric in particular and hate speech can target ethnic or religious minorities, women, the elderly, civic leaders, people with disabilities and other vulnerable groups. In Central Africa in particular there are specific triggers for the spread of disinformation which can range from tensions around a key political moment like Chad's ongoing political transition, elections or referendums like those in the Central African Republic, the action as well of malign forces and external actors including national ones and local forces which can seek to sow confusion, chaos or rip apart entire communities or even families through the sheer use of words. Other countries in the region like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon and further west in the Sahel region misinformation and disinformation continue to pose risks to peace and security. In Central Africa overall there is concern around the normalization of inflammatory rhetoric which are often propagated through misinformation and disinformation. The political and conflict trends in the region call for focused peace building approaches and significant vigilance around these trends in order to better promote community resilience and information resilience to these trends. We're delighted that USIP partners from the region and other experts are joining us today. We look forward to very rich discussion with all of you. The event will begin with a few opening remarks from our panelists followed by a moderated discussion as well as a Q&A with those of you in the room today. I'm very pleased now to introduce our panelists. We have Rozan Gatondang Zalang, founder and president of Association Jeunesse en Marche pour le Development Centrafrique which he has been leading since 2017. He is one of the leading opinion leaders and activists for peace and reconciliation in the Central African Republic and has led a variety of efforts in this area. In 2023 he was awarded the Gold Medal of Labor by the Central African Order of Merit. He has also spoken at the United Nations Security Council in the situation in CAR and the mandate of the UN mission in Karmanuska. We also have with us today Shavan Spiak who serves as the regional coordinator for the State Department's Global Engagement Center, GEC and the Counterterrorism Directorate. Spiak's primary responsibilities to oversee regional programs and coordinate inter-agency engagement on public-private partnerships to counter violent extremist organizations. Joining us online today as well from Njameina Chad we're very pleased to have with us Yaminge Betimbaye who could not be with us today due to last minute logistical challenges. Yaminge is a scientific director and political analyst that's Center for Research and Anthropology and Human Sciences or CRASH a Chadian think tank based in Njameina. He's a lecturer and professor at the University in Njameina University of Mundo. He also holds a PhD in human and political geography. He is now the focal point of CRASH's work in monitoring the Chadian political transition and leads on research of security dynamics in the region. I would love to begin with this discussion today with a question for our panelists. Dr. Betimbaye joining us online today CRASH and USIP have been important partners in advancing constructive citizen debate in Chadian's transition and address this information issues. Could you tell us a little bit more about the Chadian context, the key trends in disinformation in this environment? We're interested to hear more on this issue, how it plays out, the key drivers behind it, what an organization like yours CRASH does to better address the phenomenon. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you for this very important event. And to speak of the trends of misinformation in the context of Chad and also the implementation of the work of CRASH. I will speak on three points. First off, the main actors of disinformation in the Chadian context speaking and then misinformation and how this touches upon young people in particular and I will also speak on the points of leverage that are available to fight against misinformation that are available to us and based on the efforts of CRASH of the study of human science and anthropology we are working also together with American institutes. Within the Chad context it's a country in the south region today who is at the heart of a space that is full of conflict and Libya is at the neighbor, Sudan as well east of Niger and Nigeria and also Cameroon and the Republic of Central Africa with many security risks and danger the war in Sudan but also we have organized crime we have a transnational organized crime at work here and added to this as it pertains to Chad as of April 2021 the president of the Republic just been elected at the head of the country he was killed during a fight while he was fighting against rebels so the president after this the country went into a period of transition that was undertaken by the army and therefore and it has been 30 minutes 30 months now that the directors of the transition transition have been working to organize negotiations with community groups and they've also opened up a national dialogue with various political actors but in spite of all of this the transition has not led to a good outcome yet because there are still violent groups in the north there are community tension that are getting stronger and stronger and bloodier and bloodier and there are political there's political infighting and these are shown by violent by demonstrations that are violently repressed there was one manifestation that led to 300 deaths of demonstrators and so there is disinformation that is used by certain actors as a strategy for more mobilization of people and this is what we realized with CRASH between October in October of 2022 and March of 2023 regarding the social media we were able to identify the main actors of disinformation and we can organize these actors in two categories there are the politicians there are the activists the influencers within Africa and in the diaspora that are the main actors of disinformation and we also have young people particularly male students that really propagate this disinformation so speaking of politicians they use because of the position that they hold disinformation purposefully or involuntarily to mobilize activists in their favor to support them and a recent example some there was a person who on the one hand Mr. Massa who signed who signed a treaty Massa Sukis and after the signing of this agreement that was going to there was a false message that was distributed on the social media and and so this led to the wrong names who were going to hold power as I was telling you a while ago this Massa Sukis I was really using the social media to in his own interest by sending out false information and this created terrible animosity amongst the activists and the opposing leaders and in addition there were rebel groups that used misinformation to amplify their own agenda so when there were conflicts or inter communal conflicts the use of disinformation they used disinformation to increase hate within the community and to this we can add one more element in terms of the presence of the French military and then the Russian military in the Sahel region disinformation really amplifies and expands feelings of hate and the misinformation was used to influence the public in favor of the military the Russian military in particular over the French so we identified a few factors regarding this within social media in particular Facebook, TikTok Twitter which became X known as X Today and WhatsApp because of its ability which favorizes which allows information to be spread rapidly with the algorithms over the years there are a few platforms such as blogs other platforms such as Facebook really reinforce the psychology of violence to really and praised Russia so because of this disinformation we also need to note that in Chad the large part of the population were discovering social media and all of the information that is now circulating on the internet was making it such that this misinformation really presents a terrible threat to peace and here we are coming to some deadlines that are very important because the re-adoption of the constitution and then elections that will be following and what is certain is that the choice of many citizens whether it is for this referendum during elections this the choice of the citizens will be influenced by disinformation that is spread across social media we also note that disinformation is a catalyst in Chad and this is why in order to fight this it is we need to in crash we take certain tools we are took upon as some research to see the content and the players and the actors of social media and we have also organized meetings with leaders of civil society with the media we've had seminars workshops from people coming from also the Republic of Central Africa and the Congo to share our analysis to share our experiences on this topic to better address the topic and to end my thoughts we are really living in a context of fragile very fragile context and this danger of disinformation is very terrible and to fight it efficiently we have to work with civil society with media with researchers and they need to develop mechanisms that are based in the context and these mechanisms can help to raise the awareness of the population but also we are going to be able to do a tracking of the use of social media the government should also work to pacify the social climate and they can ask civil society and the researchers to take on these efforts international actors also can advocate to ensure that the transition, governmental transition will be done respecting the fundamental rights, human rights, thank you we have to focus a little bit from the field to Washington D.C. for another perspective on these issues I'd love to hear more from you, Shavan on how does the U.S. government on the state departments global engagement center prioritize misinformation, disinformation malinformation in its work especially on the continents and are there some illustrations that are relevant from your work that you'd like to share thank you I want to start by stating obvious to the folks in the room but the information ecosystem is more permissive than ever in allowing malign state and non state actors at any level to exert influence and really reach audiences to spread disinformation autocrats and violent extremist groups are using misdism malinformation information space to influence and undermine the policies security and stability of democracies around the world and for the U.S. department of state our goal is to ensure that credible information is not crowded out to expose disinformation campaigns and to really strengthen the integrity of the media landscape to promote democratic values and democratic communities around the world and that's for my office the global engagement center or the GEC comes into play so the GEC works to counter foreign state and non state actor propaganda disinformation outside of the United States and we work by coordinating an extensive and continuously expanding network of the U.S. interagency and global partners and allies looking at the African context and specifically the Central African region we have been seeing this convergence of strategic interests are really trying to propagate and take advantage of misdism malinformation maline actors will use disinformation to undermine public trust in government institutions and to exploit ethnic conflict local local issues and insecurity in order to gain control in that region and to build their influence specifically where we're really seeing that is Vile extremist organizations VEOs Russia and China so looking first at VEOs they continue to be one of the main threats to security and social cohesion within Central African states and one of the main drivers of disinformation Vile extremist groups will create instability by their own violent actions and then they'll use an instability as an opportunity to spread disinformation and they often like to use divisive socioeconomic issues and ethnic tensions to really create that instability and allows them to promote their ideology to recruit and then to undermine that trust in any of the other authoritative groups that are around that might be threatening their level of power we also see that Vile extremist activity and their propaganda is also a really good vector for foreign state actor in influence campaigns and we've seen this in the Central African Republic specifically with the Wagner group which is Kremlin backed Russian officials say that the Wagner group is a group of Russian instructors who have gone in to handle the CT issue and that they are going to bring peace and prosperity to the peoples as we've seen from the reports from the UN and from independent media the Wagner group has used indiscriminate killings rape abductions, just a variety of violent violent tactics against the people of Central African Republic and instead of coming in to actually help, they just try to gain their own influence and it has instead undermined the peace process for the country and has also tried to just destabilize it in a bit of a more subtle way of where we're seeing influence happening within the African continent, we see that with China in their attempts to try and influence the academic narratives that we're seeing on African universities so they will try to fund either departments or research in strategically important fields and then they will try to withhold that funding if any faculty member tries to publish anything that is contrary to PRC messaging goals to address these themes we have seen in our research and our work that once disinformation is out there you're not going to be able to take it back the damage has already been done and those effective strategy is to really build and engage these community networks of local trusted entities that can help counter propaganda disinformation so kind of going into the work that the GEC has currently been doing in the region we do have one program with our with our counterterrorism director which is one that I'm a part of working with the global strategic network and it's a two part program where we have a Facebook page where audiences get to learn about manipulative tactics through animated videos and logical fallacies so like the bandwagon fallacy to kind of educate them about how someone might be trying to manipulate them and then they're directed to an online pre-bunking game but we noticed that there was this organic engagement with the chatting audiences as well I think from the games inception we've had over 11,000 chatians play the pre-bunking game and so when we decided to do a cost extension of the program we included chat in the most recent tranche of our target audiences and so that was in the last month or so so as of October 17th I believe when our most recent video was released on the Facebook page we've had over 20,000 chatian audience members engage with the video watch it so we're very interested to see how this will continue to grow I also want to also talk about the importance really of civil society and those private public partnerships coming together really help build the resiliency of people specifically through our technology challenges that we've been doing we've had done two on the continent one was in Nairobi, Kenya in 2021 and the other one was Abhijan Kothavar this past September and it's an opportunity for technologists, innovators members of the government as well as civil society groups and academics to kind of come together and come up with these innovative solutions that are going to be locally to try and find ways to counter propaganda and disinformation because it's something that as we look forward towards the future for us as a GEC and partially as the department state it is to continue to create these concerted whole of society efforts to try and build this community of these global resilient communities and so part of that for us we recognize Africa as part of that future it's a priority region and so we want to look for our African partners to learn from you and to figure out how we can best work together because to create these solutions they're only going to be impactful if they're locally informed and so we really value the work of civil society organizations in being able to create these impactful and effective initiatives to counter propaganda and disinformation thanks for these really useful points especially on the work with civil society in the region we heard about some of the work in Central African Republic or observations at least of the trans lines there and your work in Chad as well I wanted to turn to Central African Republic now that we've talked a little bit about Chad and our partner from the region Rozan now that we've spoken a little bit about these issues we'd love to hear from you on as a civil society leader and representative of a leading organization can you tell us a little bit about the current tread lines in CIR what we heard about that context and then how an organization like yours working on the ground helps to tackle disinformation issues and hate speech and promote community resilience or social cohesion thanks thank you so much thank you partners thank you friends I'm truly very happy to be here with you today at this special meeting I'm glad to have the chance to talk about hate speech and disinformation name is Rozan Ketondong and I am president of an association that tries to make Central African Republic an inclusive place we try to allow people to develop their potential in an environment of respect for human rights so we are an actor on the front lines of peace in CIR this is of course thanks to the financial and technical support which has been unconditional from USIP partners, friends my country Central Africa it has an area of 623,000 square kilometers and it has a wealth of natural resources however the population is only 6 million people today my country has undergone a number of crises over the last 30 years now we are in the 7th Republic this follows a referendum that was held on July 30, 2023 a new constitution was promulgated on August 30, 2023 by the constitutional court however this constitution has been very contested by political classes and the democratic opposition so today's context is a major challenge for peace and stability in my country it is urgent to act taking concrete actions in favor of peace in order to continue to reduce the risks of conflict that can take multiple forms and hit multiple sectors in my country since June 2020 and up till this date there have been significant efforts made by my organization Ajamedek USAIP they have been working on fighting hate speech and disinformation these efforts have significantly contributed to reducing conflict risk in Central African Republic for example risks of conflict before during and after the referendum held on July 30, 2023 what are these efforts the publication lexicon of terms existing in my country training workshops for community leaders and organizations of civil society as well as for internet users and influencers and community leaders as well as influential politicians we have carried out local awareness raising activities as well regarding social media and community we've also used community radio in 2023 we also received some small grants that allowed us to create a consortium for peace builders in Central African Republic so we're seeing synergy among different leaders who are working in favor of peace in 2022 we also created a platform so Ajima Dek has also been eligible to receive financial support from the National Endowment for Democracy now concerning the socio-political economic and security situation which is very worrisome which is worsened by disinformation and hate speech I strongly recommend encouraging and strengthening the efforts of Ajima Dek and its partners this could take the form of strategic technical, material and financial support this would allow us to safeguard the peace process as well as the process of building the Central African democracy they are currently today very exposed to violent predators that is why Ajima Dek in order to face up to these challenges has decided to carry out the following initiatives in the Central African situation first of all creating and implementing a support fund for Central African initiatives for peace called FECAP supporting actions of the peace builders consortium and synergies between community, young community leaders creating and implementing and I'm really very pleased to mention this publication about disinformation and fighting hate speech in CAR another effort is to create a web TV channel for fighting disinformation and hate speech and in the long term this could become a TV channel for promoting peace and democracy because it's really a challenge to be close to the population and it's very important to have community based efforts so we are also working to strengthen awareness raising in Bangi and we're also interested in building, equipping or supplying and supporting a national youth organization for culture and this would actually allow us to provide long term support for the peace process in Central African Republic I would like to conclude my remarks with this phrase my voice the Central African people is counting on you to save peace in our country which is in danger long live friendship between the USA and Central African Republic CAER context the actions on the ground to mitigate disinformation hate speech very illuminating before we open it up to questions from the floor Q&A with the audience I'd like to ask one follow up question for our panelists including Yaminge who's online with us if I can start with you if I can begin with you if I can begin with you I will ask the question in French if it is easier like this I would like to know from your analysis if there are any particular methods that you feel are more efficient than others in the fight against disinformation and are there tactics that have not yet been used that you believe are rather promising within that arena thank you very much and hello to all good evening hello it's late here it's nighttime already I would like to begin by saying that that we have really rivalities within the larger powers in this whole arena as Madam Sfiak was saying earlier whether it's Russia whether it's China whether it's France we observe quite often it is the the bigger powers who who who are playing out their rivalry and within social media and I will speak on the rivalry between France and Russia for example in just this past April it was just said in the northern part of Central Africa that there is the presence of Wagner also in the south of Chad and in April of last year taking advantage of the inter-communal conflicts continuing conflicts they the the Chad decided to create border post in the south of the country near the border in the Central African territory near the Wagner position so what took place and this is what I am coming to there were journalists in particular one who has was very near the position positions and he has a good he is close to the Russian forces he put out a series of photographs right after the creation of this of this outer post near the border so that the French soldiers that said that French soldiers had been killed by bees and eight of them had been killed so this of course inflamed the Chadians yes the French the French are not strong they were were killed just by bees but this was all false the images that were published it was easy to determine by search for videos online that these videos came from China from an incident in 2013 and another one from Shanghai in 2014 and these were distributed on the social media and many public opinion was swayed by this and there was an intense therefore usage of disinformation in the rivalry between the great powers within the Chad arena and I was saying earlier it is in particular on the national dialogue that this misinformation is really mobilized also targeting ethnic differences so it's important to promote proper true information and journalists can do this there is also a large diffusion of blogs as well as social media so I think it would be important to promote the truth using professional actors such as journalists but also bloggers and influencers and I was following with I listened with much interest the intervention of Mrs. Spiek earlier I think that these methods are very useful for young people, young people, students are the first victims in fact of disinformation they are the ones who use social media the most and they are the ones who share this false information and so it's important to really efficiently reach this audience of students with the truth and this can also help to counter in a meaningful and sustainable way the misinformation that is being distributed thank you so much Yamin I'm going to now turn to Rosent for another follow-up question as well perhaps if you have any thoughts on what Yaminga said Chadi and context if there are any similarities in terms of the mechanisms of information in the CAR and the effect on young people and also to ask you what are the modalities that you have used with Gemma Digg to really reach the populations in more remote areas who don't always have access to internet or less access to internet than in other areas and so what are the methods that can be used to better reach those populations thank you I think that Chad and the CAR Central African Republic from I think there are many similarities based upon my knowledge and travels I think we need to take into account the effects of information the political actors much use disinformation much more as a new weapon today to destabilize their countries also armed groups for example in last October 9th there was a paralysis in all the schools because it said that there were some armed forces who were going to who are going to attack them and so all the schools were closed so you can imagine how this disinformation has negative effects on children, on young people even on women all of the activities all social activities were paralyzed, were shut down that day and so and 30 minutes after this disinformation was diffused and disseminated there was no activity so it's really important for us to take a much closer pay more attention to youth because if they want to stop everything they do it through young people and so we need to change the mentality and the behavior of young people insofar as how they receive and perceive social media so they are less at risk of being duped by misinformation and so in terms of new technologies new technologies we also have a new community approach to work with one option which is monitoring we put into place community organizations in the local languages that and we ask the community leaders to relay information to their own communities in their own areas and to explain how this hate talk and how this disinformation function so that they can reduce the risks of it thank you I have another question for Shivan before opening it up to questions but I wondered if you see specific information gaps in this field what additional information could we glean or are there recommendations on program priorities going forward thinking in particular about public-private partnerships or we know that AI in particular can be a driving force behind disinformation how can it be perhaps leveraged I think I'll take the AI part first a part of that for us is an evolving space that we're just seeing that technology is just growing at such a rapid rate it's really hard to be right there with it and to counter it effectively especially the type of disinformation that we're seeing that's being generated by AI but something that we are interested in is seeing how we can incorporate teaching audiences and particularly youth like we were saying it's really important that we get to them first in any of our media and digital literacy programming in any ways to teach them about learning those skills that maybe teach them about generative AI and being able to identify what that looks like to have that kind of built into those kind of spaces I guess I'll just kind of work backwards because like for priorities for us that is a priority for us as well as I think looking at digital fall into the gaps so kind of in those rural areas places that don't have access to internet so any kind of disinformation they're going to hear they don't have other resources to really fact check or verify that information so how do we get that information to them there's actually another product that's in the process of getting created through the GEC that is a Swahili based focused game that's going to be available to those who have a dumb phone who can call in and they can play this game it's going to be about me 5-10 minutes it's going to give them an opportunity to practice their critical thinking skills and be able to practice digital literacy to a degree and it's going to be in this format and so it really is important to try and find ways to reach those who are not in a space that they can get that kind of information more regularly and primarily we are seeing that in Africa that is the main priority region for us for more programming and more opportunities to work with partners there that's a really interesting example I'd love to see if there are questions in the audience here I saw one hand earlier feel free to ask in English or French please say your name, organization and keep the question brief so that our panelists can respond thank you so much we have one question here go first I will ask the question in French which will be easier for those who don't have headsets my question is for Shiban sorry if I mispronounced your name Yaminga mentioned early in his talk the important role Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp in all as vehicles of misinformation that really leads to disinformation and I was wondering what can be done from the United States to work with these institutions to fight against disinformation in the countries of Central Africa in CAR and Chad because there is a legislative corpus in the US and in Europe to put into place and implement means to fight disinformation to pull off any kind of hate talk and language but there is not as far as I know this kind of obligation in the region of Central Africa with Facebook or with other online platforms there is nothing really to motivate them to do so in Chad or the CAR and I was wondering if we look at all of the Facebook pages is there a mechanism to ensure that these platforms such as Facebook can be requested to remove these hate these hate talks and dialogue on their platforms and I was wondering therefore is there a way to mandate this for these platforms a hands raised maybe Donna would you like to to and then go ahead hello my name is Leon De Prano I am also from the same institute thank you so much for your interventions and your my question is for Mr. Yamigey you mentioned the aspect of what I often call institutional needs to have good information to ensure that journalists and others do their work properly and then also I wanted to ask in your responses I saw that actions are much more centered on reactions fast checking checking the quality of information but what efforts are you taking to resolve these as a preventive way who can do this work because as a better method and what are the aspects in terms of the security issues and the last point is about the relationships between the large powers so when disinformation comes there's also often a lack of transparency between France and its ex colonies from the military and economic perspectives and I'm wondering what do you think could be put into place to ensure more transparency even state actors even when there are factors what is the what are the efforts that are being made so that society in general can be better informed thank you so much thank you thank you so much yeah so when looking at the partnerships and how we can work with technology companies it's the information sharing we let them know kind of what we are seeing and finding ways to kind of just have that working relationship so then that way they can come to us with the stuff that they're seeing and we can kind of work together now in regards to getting the information that is disinformation and misinformation getting that offline that from the United States perspective that's kind of a tricky space because for us the first amendment is our main thing and so it is more so recognizing content that incites to violence usually is going to be the type of content that you might try to take down but when it comes to moderating content or to help these companies better work I would say probably in the Central African region it's a lot of times they don't have the language skills to identify maybe where that language is coming from they don't know the coded language that could be used and have that contextual information like the slang that's being used to identify maybe hey if someone's talking about I don't know a chicken's wearing a red shirt they should know that that means that there's this group that's going to try and cause damage next week at this election so it's like making sure that they have that kind of information I think is really important and I think that continues to be an ever evolving conversation that we're having with tech companies of just like making sure that their terms and agreements that they're being implemented and executed appropriately where they are and that's to just really kind of promote to them the importance of having that contextualized information to help them be stronger in what they're trying to do and I think that would probably be really helpful in the context for the region because yeah there isn't a ton that's there right now but that's probably where we're at at this point but it's going to continue just to be an evolving conversation over time Thanks. The point on context specific and like is really really critical so great question and thanks so much for taking that. Perhaps on the second question if maybe I can start with Yaminga if that's okay if you have any reactions Yaminga any reactions to this institutional approach question sure thank you and hello Leon Trebano who came to our office actually at Crash my organization we work with the media in order to improve the quality of information and we also try to encourage the media to perform fact checking so we have a whole series of activities with the media and I would also admit that even civil society leaders are considered to be community information leaders so we work with them as well now in terms of state actors it's a little harder and that's for one reason today Chad is trying to manage the transition we're seeing the effects of crises around the country and if they aren't worried about managing the transition they're trying to mitigate the effects of the war in Sudan and so government actors actually are focused on other things right now that's why at Crash we have started on started trying to work to bring together civil society actors as well as government actors as partners in this fight which is for us really an existential fight when government actors are face to face with civil society actors and government actors feel like they're being accused that's very difficult but when they work together they can feel like they both have an interest in this fight we want government actors to really take ownership of this fight there was recently a meeting of influencers around the topic of hate speech it was very interesting and we're trying to work on advocacy in this way these actors can understand that they aren't enemies around this question of disinformation and fighting hate speech at Crash we are here at the beginning of the transition and we are really trying to work with the support of USIP to really take this issue under control because these are things that are going to remain once the transition has been accomplished thank you Yemengay Rozan do you have anything to add yes of course thank you thank you so much now I can talk about the Central African context it's very there is a big financial difficulty to have a credible media outlet I can tell you that our media is does not have a lot of financial support and media professionals are really easy prey for those who wish to manipulate them by offering money so if we want to have true correct information from the media we would need to consider improving the working environment of media professionals Ajima Dek is currently working on a 2024 plan we are trying to create a mediation plan between civil society and the government we've already been able to create a space for free democratic exchange with different actors and it's really quite interesting now to work on advocacy and to work with government actors to put them in touch with civil society actors here's something else I can add we would like to go further we'd like to work with elected officials at the national level we think that we could achieve a law that would strengthen a communications council that exists in our country its responsibility is to regulate the media we're hoping to strengthen this institution if possible through a law or we would like to otherwise revise an existing law thus we can give this fight against hate speech a chance but it is difficult thank you so much that was another excellent question the first row Donna if you'd like to ask can you take probably another one after that if there are others thank you so much Archie really appreciate a very robust conversation appreciate all of the questions and responses from panelists and audience members this is really an important discussion my question is focused on government intervention and response and I'd like to focus my question toward Mr. Yamenge and Rosin please in your view what is the proper role for the government in addressing these issues either proactively or reactively and what is your assessment of what government actors are doing now and do you see some space for additional resources attention capabilities that can either be mustered or convened in partnership with civil society and with additional support from countries like the United States other interested parties in Europe and elsewhere thank you maybe Rosin would you or Yamenge would one of you like to respond to this question on the role of the governments yes in the case of my country government really has a role to play in the fight against disinformation why the people tends to believe in the government safe we need to recognize this any information coming from the government in my country is believed by the people even if it's false even if it's poor information the people see information coming from the government as true that's why we want the government to be more involved in the fight against disinformation and hate speech this would really help mitigate risks of conflict through these channels so I can talk to you about something that Ajima Dek worked on we initiated an effort to support the government in the fight against disinformation so we created an organization bringing together different civil society actors very first time and so we have this platform actually for different civil society actors we're hoping that the john darms police officers and other law enforcement agencies can also get involved on this platform even the justice system we have our criminal code but the big problem is this we have not yet had judicial action in cases where there's been an incident so we would really like to encourage our government to get involved in this fight against disinformation and hate speech thank you also may have something to say absolutely in terms of Chad our government is more reactive than proactive at this point I think that this is not sufficient in the current situation the Chadian government is not well positioned it's not well positioned to take up the fight against disinformation the situation itself is not particularly democratic or peaceful and this context has contributed to the government's ineffectiveness or inaction so the government appears as an indirect actor for disinformation and misinformation and so it's really quite difficult for it to take up this fight in that role however these are challenges that the government is not really able to take up at the moment in order to effectively combat disinformation or hate speech for that matter contrary to what Rozan said about Central African Republic Chad has a problem with public information so the speaker is cutting up there is a segment of the people that does not believe in what the government is saying now there are certain actions that we could take we could work in the education sector and that's something that might be of interest to the government Asbiak made a presentation of a possible possible action and it's a proposal that could be integrated into the education sector this is something that could be of interest to the government this is also the case for training of the media in order to promote the spread of correct information this could happen at journalism schools at the level of media regulation in the government we see a possibility there to collaborate with the government now in terms of civil society it's just a question of community awareness raising this is something that civil society is able to work on with some effectiveness civil society can raise awareness about the risks of hate speech and about the importance of fact checking and verifying information so that's what I might be able to add to this conversation thank you Yemengay this was really a very interesting response so we're seeing responses from the field from Washington about how to face up to these issues are there any other from the audience there's perhaps would you like to start thank you I'm Viviane with Africa Society and I'd like to ask my question of our two presenters from Africa is it possible to create a program that could be then replicated in neighboring countries and to what extent do you have the funding necessary to do such a thing so DRC is a southern neighbor for you and we're seeing that there is a high level of disinformation in that country right now I also just wanted to add a little note on disinformation here in our country that is to say the United States we saw that in the previous elections you were not the only people who are suffering from this problem thank you is there one other question go ahead hello hello Yemengay my name is Wapingi I work here at USIP and I have a question it's about influential groups so I'm hearing that in CAR people trust the government not so much in Chad are there other external actors that are seen as wise people maybe village leaders or another third party that would be able to really explain the situation of disinformation is there such a third party in Chad or Central African Republic I know it exists in other countries thank you maybe you would like to answer both of those questions the question about programs that can be duplicated and the question of people who are third parties who are trusted sure I think that we're actually already working with Chad on a program for the subregion I also have a friend in the DRC and we're trying again to create this subregional program that would allow us to work conjointly on fighting disinformation and hate speech no I don't think that this third party really does exist at this point there are local actors but they're having trouble really influencing the people and this is due to the crises that we see in different places we are working on having a strong civil society so that we could use the civil society to influence the environment to work with the population thank you and Yaminge maybe you would like to say something your internet was a bit slow so if it cuts out maybe you can just turn off your video but we're very interested in hearing what you have to say on both of these questions the regional programs and the wise third parties thank you so much I'm going to come back to what Rosette said earlier so we so we work with our colleagues of Gemadik and others in Central Africa and also in Chad these are perspectives that we all share I do believe that there is the possibility of replication if there is an initiative that proves to be efficient in one area or one locality or another the question of course often is funding in countries such as ours and so therefore many times there are good ideas that that are unable to see the light so this is something that we could look at we could be to share our experiences thoughts, critical thinking in the region with CAR and Chad and the DRC Chad is a country that is very religious with a large part of the population being Muslim and another large component that is Christian perhaps 40 to 50% on each side and then there are others who are believers and so I believe the religious leaders are actors who are well listened to and we have worked with them through an initiative called the group of the elders with CRUSH we have understood that there are actors that come from civil society and from the government who have a certain capabilities and competencies and who can speak to former government officials for example or others from civil society and they can get together and if they can understand that together they can have a greater influence and this is why CRUSH is always working to have the to start an advisory group and we are hoping that this advisory group can play an important role can advocate can speak both with the government actors as well as the actors of civil society and bring them closer. Thank you so much Yamin Ge for these very concrete examples and on this third way as you mentioned using influential actors maybe one or two if there is any other questions from the floor no more questions from the floor Just a question I have just one question concerning this program that was begun in Swahili does this exist in other languages or not or are you looking to expand this program so perhaps she had to leave the room I'm so sorry but perhaps when she returns she can let us know if it's being done this program is being undertaken in other languages perhaps while we wait for Shavan's return if she's feeling better I don't know Rosanne if you have any concluding remarks in the meanwhile to share and then in terms of what the others have brought you today this discussion in terms of leaders of civil society in Kaur very interesting I really appreciated everything in terms of the people of CAR are rather peaceful people and we really are engaged to work for peace and through different local initiatives that we've already put into plays thanks to some grants that we have received for local organizations to undertake short term actions but very efficiently and to also work with actors working towards peace having mediation between the two political blocks in our country the democratic to allow really the convert we are at a very interesting point in our country currently and to allow the different actors to speak in a more peaceful way you were discussing in the Swahili language and whether it's available in other languages did I get your question correct? yeah that's correct because we're really fascinating from the apps in the U.S. so apologies I'm getting over cold so patiently my throat will start coughing so I'm sorry I keep sipping out so for that programs for that particular product right now it's just going to be created in Swahili but we do also have Cat Park which is the GEC is actually award winning game on countering on teaching people about media literacy and digital literacy and that's been translated into I think 17 languages at this point and it is actually in the process of being reconfigured for African audiences so we're going to do the language we're going to change the background the context to all make it specific for African audiences and that is going to be available also soon in Swahili and Amarik so that's coming up but I would say Cat Park is a really great one to look at which is a similar online game that's usually on a web browser shouldn't take too much of a bandwidth to play but they're available in many many languages to allow audiences to learn great thanks I think we might have time for one more question please maybe a little bit sorry so I work in education and in public diplomacy and I tried out those two games they were exciting but I was nervous with using them because to get more points you actually use disinformation and I wondered about that strategy so the whole idea is like the inoculation theory and it's really to kind of show people it is a weird thing where you're kind of like okay you want me to actually try and use disinformation you want me to use these tactics but the answer is we want to show you in a safe structured way how to use them so you also understand how they are being used potentially against you because also at the end of these games you get the opportunity to reuse those same tactics to try and fix some of the damage that you've caused in Kat Park or that one it's to basically there's a story about that the government is trying to build this this park for cats and how they're wasting government resources and all this stuff that should be going towards roads you're being told that oh there's this group of people and only they know the truth and you're going to help them and you go through this process of learning these tactics and then you find out well no it's just this one guy who wants to lower the cost of land so that he can buy something and build what he wants to do there's no cap for park it's not a big deal at all but at this point you've now have created these memes and you've done all these things and people have gone crazy and you've caused damage to the public space and you realize like oh no I've done this and so now you've got to go back through and show maybe the photos you took were actually doctored that that wasn't actually the case that memes maybe saying of how things are fine with cats and different things like that and you kind of get that opportunity to use it in a way to see that it can be used for good too because I think that also goes back to positive things to it for where there is bad you can also apply it for good and so it's just trying to teach people to be aware of how it's being used against them and what that may look like but then how that can be used as a positive response and potentially just a way to counter it in the first place Thanks so much I wanted to thank the panelists today Rozan, Yaminge, Shavan for participating in this really rich discussion we hope there's some useful lessons that we can all take away from this in terms of context specific analysis local knowledge languages and expertise and institutional approaches from a proactive approach to also reactive in some cases so thanks as well to all of you that joined today in person and online from around the world we really thank you for this and we'll be in touch again soon with more of these discussions on this important issue Thank you