CAR

Summary

In the Central African Republic, as in other African countries, the vast majority of people live in communities, whether ethnic or religious. At times the government and some international organisations established in the country, use traditional chiefdoms, such as district chiefs, group chiefs or commune chiefs, in order to transmit their directives to the population. For example, neighbourhood or village leaders are often used to link information to the population by megaphone very early in the morning during campaigns to vaccinate children in a specific areas.

In addition to health campaigns, the government regularly uses the same approach for the electoral census or to raise awareness on peace and social cohesion in times of crisis. More specifically, with the latest crisis in the country, the authorities are increasingly using religious leaders to try to convey messages. This is the case of the Muslim community, which considers some media to be hostile towards them. To this end, the Imams appear to be the main interlocutors of the authorities, including some international humanitarian organisations.

While public authorities are increasingly using religious and traditional leaders to provide guidance to the Central African population, musicians and artists encourage the new generations. For instance, the musician Ozaguin OZ, sponsored by the United Nations Integrated Mission for Stabilisation in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) and the wife of Head of State Tina Touadera, toured several cities across the country with the song Poupou Ti Siriri (Wind of Peace). The objective, according to MINUSCA, is to launch awareness messages, inviting Central Africans to respect public authority and not to be subjected to violence.

In each ethnic community, signs and codes are still used to transmit messages very quickly. In most Central African villages, group leaders use the whistle or tam-tam to announce important news or imminent danger in their community. In Obo, a town in southeastern CAR that is plagued by violence from Ugandan rebels of Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army, residents were using tam-tam to alert the local population of the danger if the rebels were seen in the area. In Kpakou, a village 30 km from the town of Sibut on the axis of Dékoa, on the night between 30 and 31 July, 2018, the leader of the group, after hearing gunfire about 5 km away from his town, immediately alerted the whole village with whistles. This allowed the inhabitants of Kpakou to leave their homes in a matter of minutes. As a reminder, it was on the occasion of the murder (by unknown assassins) of three Russian journalists