A dead minister, the intervention of the French army, or polling stations on fire? This is the kind of fake news relayed on the day of the presidential election in Côte d'Ivoire, mainly by foreign actors, in order to "disrupt the vote" on Saturday and "create panic."

The final results of the Ivorian presidential election were announced on Monday: incumbent President Alassane Ouattara, 83, was re-elected in the first round for a fourth term, with a landslide victory of 89.77%.

Although at least ten people have died in electoral-related incidents since mid-October, the vote took place generally peacefully on Saturday. A few clashes broke out in some towns in the south and west, but without "a major impact on the voting process," according to Interior Minister Vagondo Diomandé.

However, disinformers have attempted to paint a darker picture online, the opposite of reality.

This was noted on Monday by the Consortium of Civil Society Organizations for Elections in Côte d'Ivoire (COSCELCI), stating in a press release that election day had "been marked by a proliferation of false information constructed to manipulate opinion and maintain confusion."

For example, a flurry of identical posts, some of which generated more than 15,000 reactions and 2,800 comments, claimed that several specific polling stations in the Abidjan district of Yopougon were victims of arson, with photos of burning buildings to support their claims.

Other posts, again accompanied by photos held up as evidence, claimed that polling stations had been "ransacked" in "Gagnoa and Toumodi," two towns located in the west and center of the country.

But none of this is true.

- "Discredit the vote" -

An AFP journalist visited Yopougon on October 25 and found that none of the polling stations listed had been set on fire. Digital investigations revealed the origin of the photos used as evidence.

All of them are old and decontextualized, actually coming from fires that occurred in recent months in Cameroon or Nigeria. Similarly, the photo supposedly showing the disorder in Gagnoa or Toumodi was taken by the Reuters news agency during the recent protests in Togo.

Sowing doubts about security near polling places can frighten voters and increase abstention rates. On Saturday, nearly half of Ivory Coast's 8.7 million voters did not go to the polls.

More broadly, "the false information disseminated in the context of this election was primarily aimed at discrediting the integrity of the vote and sowing panic," Valdez Onanina of the fact-checking organization Africa Check told AFP.

According to the COSCELCI report, Saturday's disinformation was characterized by "coordinated behavior," "with the mechanical reproduction of the same texts and visuals."

It was organized around four main axes, including the deterioration of the security situation, but also false obituaries, the supposed postponement of elections and alleged French interference.

This observation is shared by the AFP, which has debunked, for example, fake news about an alleged fatal attack on the convoy taking Defense Minister Téné Birahima Ouattara to vote - supported by a photo dating from 2020 - or about the presence of French soldiers near the Independent Electoral Commission.

- Foreign interference -

The fact that the French army is involved in this wave of disinformation is not a coincidence, but rather reveals the actors behind this fake news.

According to COSCELCI, "two main dynamics" were at work on Saturday: "internal manipulation" by a few local actors, but also and above all "foreign interference", whose "most active actors came mainly from the AES region (Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger)".

Since the military seized power there following successive coups between 2020 and 2022, these three countries have turned their backs on France and are feeding the networks with information targeting the Ivorian government, in particular because of its good relations with the former French colonial power.

This trend has further accelerated with the start of the presidential campaign.

"African elections offer privileged opportunities for disinformation," recalled a study by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies in 2024, which specifies that disinformation campaigns have "almost quadrupled since 2022" on the continent.