Cameroon signals urgency on biometric voter ID collection as presidential vote nears

Calls are multiplying from officials of Cameroon’s elections management agency (ELECAM) across the country for registered voters to take possession of their biometric voter cards in a move that has been considered a race against time.

The election agency is now racing to distribute both backlogged old cards and newly printed ones as the country’s presidential election is just a month away. Some of the uncollected cards date back to 2018 and even older, officials say.

Cameroonians are due to elect a new president on October 12 in an election that has incumbent President Paul Biya and 11 other candidates in the race.

According to ELECAM, hundreds of thousands of biometric voter cards remain uncollected at its decentralized offices across the nation, and officials are said to be using door-to-door campaigns, mobile teams, and council area commissions to get these cards to their owners.

Registered voters without voter cards will not be able to cast their ballot on polling day, ELECAM warns.

In the Littoral Region, for example, officials say there are more than 350,000 cards still uncollected, as officials intensify strategies to make sure they meet registered citizens through proximity methods.

In the South Region, the Regional Delegate of ELECAM told state broadcaster, CRTV, recently that they received more than 115,000 voter cards from the Directorate General of ELECAM covering the period 2021-2024, but that just around 50,000 cards have been collected.

Of the total number of cards collected for distribution in the South West Region, just around 48 percent of them have been handed over to their owners, the ELECAM Regional Delegate for that region, Zofoa Njoya Sake, told Biometric Update in a chat.

He said of the 66,515 cards received, about 31,861 of them have been distributed, while more than 34,000 others remain to withdrawn by their owners. Nonetheless, he said they have received logistical support to enable them clear the backlog of uncollected cards.

In the past weeks, ELECAM’s teams say they have been working in collaboration with members of commissions charged with the issuance and distribution of voter cards in all council areas to ramp up collection.

Their efforts are intended to make sure that all registered voters receive their cards before election day on October 12.

Cameroon’s electoral law states that biometric voter cards issued to registered voters shall be permanent, and can only be replaced in the case of loss or damage.

Apart from voter card distribution, ELECAM says it is also currently in the process of deduplicating the biometric voter registry which has around 8.2 million registered voters.

In May, ELECAM announced that it took delivery of new biometric gear to support voter registration for the presidential election. It also trained some of its staff on the effective use of the devices.

Cameroon introduced a biometric voter registration system in 2012 with a first set of 1,200 kits supplied then by German firm Giesecke and Devrient. Other kits were later purchased from GenKey and Veridos, according to ELECAM sources.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  Cameroon  |  digital ID  |  ELECAM  |  identity document  |  voter registration