Structuring, professionalising and repositioning communication in Africa

This contribution is first and foremost part of a much broader collective reflection on the need to think and rethink communication practices in Cameroon. The book in which it was published notably sought to create a space for dialogue between two worlds that, for a long time, had sometimes developed along relatively parallel paths: academia and communication professionals. It therefore brought together academics, researchers and recognised professionals from the field of communication in Cameroon and, more broadly, across Central Africa.

For my part, this contribution with Professor Colette Djadeu Nguemedyam should not be seen as an isolated piece of work. It forms part of a process of introspection about the environment in which communication professionals operate, the systems that structure their practices, but also the social and professional representations surrounding these occupations. There is indeed an important distinction between professional communication practices and the social practices that help shape them. When we look at marketing, communication, public relations or, to some extent, information-related professions, we see that professionals never work in a neutral environment. They operate within institutional, economic, technological, cultural and social ecosystems that strongly influence their practices.

It was precisely this reflection that gradually fed the idea of creating, in 2024, the Association des Communicateurs en Marche, ACOMA. The creation of ACOMA therefore stems from a form of introspection, but also from an observation: the need to reposition organisational communication in Africa and to help structure more effectively the professional ecosystem associated with it.

When we conceived ACOMA, the aim was not simply to create yet another professional association. Our ambition was to help build a space capable of bringing together communication, public relations and marketing professionals around shared issues, but above all around a common vision of how these professions should evolve in Africa. We started from the observation that these professions still face a number of major difficulties: problems of recognition and legitimacy with certain institutions, questions relating to professional identity, challenges concerning the visibility and standing of these professions, as well as issues linked to innovation, adaptation to technological change and the implementation of professional practices that are more responsible, more sustainable and better suited to African realities.

The question of recognition is particularly important. Communication is omnipresent in organisations, companies, public institutions, development projects and territories. Yet its strategic role is not always recognised in proportion to its importance. Communication is still sometimes regarded as a support function, or even as a simple execution function, even though it now plays a role in issues as decisive as crisis management, reputation, social acceptability, digital transformation, change management, stakeholder relations, institutional diplomacy and mobilisation around public policies.

This is where our reflection on organisational communication takes on its full meaning. We believe it should no longer be understood solely as a set of techniques or as a simple tool serving organisations. It is a genuine professional field, with its own issues, bodies of knowledge, responsibilities and ethical requirements. We therefore believe it is necessary to help reposition it as a legitimate, structured and strategic profession within African societies.

The contribution I produced with Professor Colette Djadeu Nguemedyam is particularly interesting in this respect because it led us to examine communication through a very concrete issue: interactions between development organisations and neighbouring communities.

In particular, we looked at communication issues linked to the acceptability of major development projects, using as a case study the Inclusive and Resilient Cities Development Project, the PDVIR, implemented in Cameroon by the ministry responsible for Urban Development and Housing. This type of project is especially useful for understanding the strategic dimension of communication, because a development project is never deployed in a social vacuum.

When a major infrastructure or development project is introduced into a territory, it can profoundly transform the lives of the people who live there. It can change traffic routes, lead to the destruction or relocation of certain homes, transform living spaces, cause the disappearance or reconfiguration of some economic activities and, more broadly, alter social habits.

But the issue becomes even deeper when we consider that some spaces are not merely physical spaces. They may have extremely strong symbolic, cultural, historical or economic value for local populations. A road, a market, a river, a community space or a gathering place may represent far more than a simple feature of an urban or rural landscape.

We find this issue in many development projects around the world. In the construction of certain dams, for example, communities that have traditionally depended on fishing may face a radical transformation of their environment and, consequently, of their economic and social model. Asking them to accept the project therefore does not simply mean explaining that it will generate electricity or provide new infrastructure. It also means taking into account what the project represents for their daily lives, their economy, their culture, their perceptions and their future.

It is precisely within this space that we identified the importance of what I call acceptability communication. In the case of public institutions, we can speak more specifically of public communication for the social acceptability of development projects.

In my view, this form of communication is particularly important because it cannot be reduced to a conventional communication campaign. It operates in situations where tensions may potentially exist between the objectives of a project and the interests, habits or perceptions of the populations concerned. It therefore requires an extremely fine-grained understanding of the territory, the actors involved, perceptions, resistance, expectations and social dynamics.

Acceptability communication is certainly not about asking populations to mechanically accept a project that has already been decided. It must help create the conditions for mutual understanding, dialogue, participation and, whenever possible, co-construction. For a development project to be sustainable, it is not enough for it to be technically relevant or financially viable. It must also be understood, appropriated and accepted by the populations for whom it is intended or whom it directly affects.

This reflection strengthened my conviction that a communication professional must be far more than a content producer or an executor responsible for disseminating messages. They must be able to understand social transformations, anticipate resistance, listen to stakeholders, create spaces for dialogue and support organisations in increasingly complex environments.

This reflection subsequently led to an article devoted to acceptability communication, published on an editorial platform associated with Frédéric Fougerat, President of Tenkan Paris. The objective was notably to offer decision-makers, managers and communication professionals insight into an issue that remains insufficiently explored in our professional practices.

For me, this editorial and academic approach was almost a professional duty. When you belong to a professional field undergoing so many transformations and playing such an important role in contemporary societies, I believe it is essential to contribute to collective thinking about its evolution. We cannot simply practise communication; we must also reflect on what kind of profession we are building and the place we want it to occupy in African societies.

It is within this continuity that the emergence of ACOMA should be understood. The association was born from this desire to structure a professional ecosystem, bring professionals closer together, foster exchanges with academia, strengthen skills and, above all, reposition communication as a strategic function serving organisations and development.

ACOMA therefore aims to be a network of communication professionals in Africa, bringing together actors from communication, public relations and marketing around issues of professionalisation, structuring and repositioning their professions. But beyond defending professional interests, we want to place this dynamic within a broader perspective: the development of Africa.

Because the challenges facing our continent are also communication challenges. Digital transformation, territorial development, the ecological transition, public policy, entrepreneurship, education, health, culture, diplomacy, crisis management and major infrastructure projects all require communication systems capable of creating understanding, trust, participation and engagement.

Our reflection therefore starts from a simple conviction:

there can be no sustainable transformation without communication capable of creating connections between organisations, institutions and populations.

The contribution with Professor Colette Djadeu Nguemedyam thus reinforced a conviction I already held: the need to change the way we look at communication in Africa. Organisational communication must no longer be regarded as a peripheral function. It must be recognised as a genuine lever for transformation, dialogue and development.

The creation of ACOMA in 2024 is therefore less the direct consequence of a publication than the culmination of an intellectual and professional journey. Academic work, observation of professional practices, exchanges with academics and professionals, and analysis of transformations in our societies gradually converged around the same necessity:

to structure, professionalise and reposition communication in Africa so that it can fully play its role in building the societies to which we aspire.

Ultimately, it is this articulation between research, professional practice and associative engagement that forms the foundation of ACOMA. We want to make communication not only a better recognised and better structured profession, but also a genuine instrument of social, economic and institutional transformation across the continent.

I would first like to make a fundamental point: the merit of an organisation does not lie simply in existing. The true merit of an organisation lies in its ability to turn its existence into results, capitalise on the resources at its disposal, seize the opportunities that arise and convert them into concrete actions serving its strategic objectives.

In ACOMA's case, we have always wanted to avoid the logic of measuring an association's vitality solely by the number of its members, the number of its events or the visibility of its publications. Those elements matter, of course, but they are not sufficient to measure the real impact of a professional organisation.

When we speak about ACOMA, IPRA, the African Communicators' Fair or our various platforms, it is important to understand that these names carry professional, institutional and symbolic significance. They reflect an ambition: to contribute to structuring a professional field that is still being built in several African countries.

The first indicator of our effectiveness will therefore be our ability to bring about concrete change in the communication profession.

The partnership concluded in May 2025 with the International Public Relations Association, IPRA, is an important element of our trajectory in this respect. For a network that defines itself as a network of communication professionals in Africa, being able to engage in dialogue with an international reference organisation in the field of public relations represents a considerable opportunity.

The challenge, however, is not to mechanically reproduce in Africa standards designed elsewhere. It is rather to create a space for dialogue between international standards and local realities. This was in fact one of the first questions I raised in my exchanges within this international network: how can we ensure that global standards in communication and public relations enter into dialogue with the social, economic, cultural and institutional realities of our countries?

With its history and international reach, IPRA provides precisely such a space for comparing experiences. The organisation has existed for more than sixty years and has accompanied many major developments in the public relations profession internationally. It brings together professionals from different continents and addresses issues that go far beyond commercial communication alone: governance, sustainable development, peace, equality, the environment, social responsibility, reputation, professional ethics and stakeholder relations.

It is therefore a relationship that enables us to move beyond operating in a closed circle.

But once again,

the partnership with IPRA is not in itself an indicator of effectiveness. It becomes one when it produces measurable effects: new collaborations, exchanges of expertise, participation by international experts in our activities, access to high-level professional thinking, comparison of our practices with international standards and, above all, the appropriation of those standards by African professionals.

That is what we want to measure.

The second indicator is therefore our ability to

build bridges between professionals, universities, students, companies, institutions and development organisations.

We have already begun to develop this dynamic through several initiatives. I am thinking in particular of ResoCom, whose second edition brought together different actors from academia and the professional world around issues of communication, public relations and marketing. One objective was to bring students and professionals closer together, because we believe that a profession cannot be sustainably structured unless it creates continuity between education, research and practice.

This issue is fundamental in Africa. Our universities train many young people for communication professions, but we still need to strengthen the mechanisms that allow those young people to meet professionals, understand market realities, access mentoring, participate in projects and gradually build their professional identity.

That is also why we have extended some of our activities beyond Yaoundé and Douala.

We have gone out to meet territories and professionals in different regions of Cameroon. In particular, we have worked on initiatives relating to communication and journalism in the age of artificial intelligence in the East Region. We have also developed collaborations with various associative, professional and institutional actors. We have had exchanges and activities in Gabon and elsewhere in Central Africa.

Why is this important?

Because an association that claims to represent communication professionals in Africa cannot remain concentrated in capitals or a handful of major urban centres. It must go to the professionals. It must listen to the territories. It must understand the realities of agencies, institutional communicators, journalists, marketing managers, consultants, teachers and students.

Feedback from the field is therefore a major indicator for us.

We want to know whether professionals believe that we are genuinely addressing their concerns. We want to know whether students find in our activities opportunities to learn and connect with the market. We want to know whether companies and institutions identify ACOMA as a credible interlocutor. We want to know whether our actions genuinely help new collaborations to emerge.

In other words, we do not want simply to measure what we do. We want to measure

what our actions produce in others.

The third indicator concerns

professionalisation.

It is not enough to organise conferences about communication. If, after several years of existence, professionals continue to face the same difficulties of recognition, identity, legitimacy and structuring, we will have failed on what matters most.

We must therefore be able to measure our contribution to changes in professional practice: adoption of reference frameworks, dissemination of ethical standards, skills development, improvement of practices, greater use of research, integration of innovation and consideration of sustainability issues.

The question of ethics is particularly essential.

We want to contribute to communication that is not only effective but also responsible. In an environment marked by artificial intelligence, disinformation, hyperconnectivity and the acceleration of content production, communication professionals must more than ever be able to distinguish between what is technically possible and what is professionally and ethically acceptable.

One of the indicators of our effectiveness will therefore also be our ability to advance this professional culture.

The fourth indicator is

recognition of the profession.

And this is where an interesting issue arises, one that we particularly want to place at the heart of the future African Communicators' Fair.

You will have noticed that in French we sometimes use the term « communicateur » and sometimes « communicant ». This hesitation is not merely linguistic. It reveals a much deeper issue: the identity of the communication professional in the public sphere.

In medicine, the professional is a doctor. In journalism, a journalist. In mechanics, a mechanic. But when it comes to communication, we still encounter a great diversity of titles: communicant, communicateur, communications officer, communications manager, public relations officer, consultant, expert, community manager, communications attaché, and so on.

This diversity may be legitimate because the field of communication is extremely broad. But it also reveals a difficulty in building a sufficiently clear and recognised professional identity.

This is an issue that deserves collective discussion.

It is notably one of the reasons why the initial Central African Communicators' Fair project is now evolving into an

African Communicators' Fair, planned for 2027. The enthusiasm generated by the project led us to reconsider its geographical ambition.

The Fair will therefore not simply be another professional event.

We want to make it a space where communication is put on display.

In other words, a space where we show what communication professions really are, their different ecosystems, their transformations, their challenges and their contributions to development.

We particularly want to address how professions are structured in different countries, taking into account the realities specific to each context. We also want to showcase professionals, agencies and organisations that are developing innovative, ethical and sustainable practices in communication, public relations and marketing.

The success of the Fair will therefore not be measured only by the number of participants.

We will instead look at the number of professionals mobilised, the diversity of countries represented, university participation, the quality of the experts present, the collaborations that result, the recommendations produced, the partnerships concluded and, above all, what is done with those recommendations after the event.

A fair that ends with applause but no follow-up does not constitute lasting success.

We want it to leave traces: reflections, reference frameworks, collaborations, training, research, commitments and, potentially, proposals addressed to institutions.

The fifth indicator is therefore our ability to

produce knowledge.

This is a dimension I care particularly about because I also come from the world of research.

ACOMA should not merely be a network that organises events. It should also be a space for producing and circulating knowledge about organisational communication in Africa.

With this in mind, we are gradually developing editorial initiatives, scientific contributions, magazines, platforms for reflection and spaces for dialogue between researchers and professionals.

It is also from this perspective that the GLOCOM project, the Global Communication Forum, which we hope to develop from 2027 onward, should be understood.

GLOCOM starts from a simple idea: the major governance and development challenges facing African countries can no longer be considered independently of communication.

Peace, governance, digital transformation, territorial development, the attractiveness of states, diplomacy, the environment and citizen participation are all now permeated by communication issues.

In a world characterised by digital immediacy, a crisis of confidence can become international within minutes. A public decision may be interpreted, challenged or appropriated on social media before institutions have even had time to explain it. A public policy may fail not because it is necessarily bad, but because it has not been sufficiently understood or appropriated by the population.

Communication therefore becomes a governance issue.

GLOCOM's ambition is precisely to create an international platform capable of highlighting the trajectories of different African countries, their experiences, their challenges and their prospects in governance and development.

Finally, there is one last indicator that may seem to me even more important than all the others:

ACOMA's ability to help a new generation of African professionals emerge, capable of thinking about their profession from the realities of the continent while engaging in dialogue with international standards.

This is where the partnership with IPRA takes on its full meaning.

We now have access to international professionals who can contribute to our activities, share their experiences and open new perspectives for our members. Some professionals in the international network have already expressed an interest in the initiatives we are developing.

I am thinking in particular of professionals such as Ron Jabal, a public relations and communication expert and head of PAGEONE, who has worked as a communication adviser to several international organisations, including the European Union, the United Nations, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. His participation in our initiatives illustrates precisely this desire to build bridges between international expertise and African realities.

We want to multiply this type of bridge.

Ultimately, if you ask me how we would like ACOMA's effectiveness to be assessed, I would say:

do not assess us solely by the number of our members or the number of our events. Assess us by the transformation we help to produce.

Assess us by a young student's ability to gain access to a professional they would otherwise never have met. Assess us by a communication professional's ability to improve their practices. Assess us by an agency's ability to adopt better standards. Assess us by an institution's ability to understand the strategic value of communication. Assess us by our ability to create collaborations between Africa and the rest of the world. Finally, assess us by our ability to contribute to recognition of communication as a genuine profession and as a lever for development.

ACOMA was not therefore born with ready-made answers.

It does not arrive with some kind of « bag of solutions » that simply needs to be distributed to African societies. Our ambition is different.

We want to question. We want to challenge. We want to deconstruct certain representations. We want to build new reference frameworks. And sometimes we will have to deconstruct what we ourselves have built in order to rebuild it better.

In my view, that is the role of a professional network that genuinely wants its action to endure.

And it is precisely within this mission that IPRA's support and partnership take on their full importance. For us, this is not about attaching ourselves to an international organisation simply to gain a form of symbolic recognition. It is about building a mutually beneficial relationship capable of strengthening the professions of communication, public relations and marketing, while connecting those professions to the major challenges of sustainable development.

Our true indicator of success will therefore be our ability to ensure that, in a few years' time, communication in Africa is better structured, better recognised, more ethical, more innovative, more closely connected to the realities of territories and fully regarded as a strategic function of development.

If we manage to contribute, even modestly, to that transformation, then we will be able to say that ACOMA has genuinely fulfilled its mission.

I would first like to return to this distinction, because international recognition should never be regarded as an end point. I would even say, to borrow a phrase I like very much: distinctions are condemnations. Once you have been distinguished, you can no longer cross a river without getting wet. In other words, recognition places an additional responsibility on you. More is expected of your positions, your commitments and, above all, your ability to turn that recognition into useful action.

This distinction also has a particular dimension for ACOMA, because four members of our network received this international recognition, including Mr Venant Axel Alima, Elvis Pengou and Mr Daryl Tchabat Chat. Beyond personal satisfaction, we therefore saw it as a form of recognition of the thinking we are trying to advance collectively about transformations in communication, artificial intelligence and the ethical issues accompanying those transformations.

On the substance, my position is fairly clear:

artificial intelligence is probably one of the most important technological transformations that contemporary professions are having to face today. And communication, as a profession, obviously cannot remain outside that transformation.

Artificial intelligence does not simply add a few more tools to our professional toolbox. It is gradually reshaping professional landscapes. It is transforming working methods, expected skills, production processes, relationships between professionals and organisations and, more broadly, the way we conceive certain professions.

We can already see this in many sectors: medicine, computing, geography, geomatics, dentistry, finance, industry, education and many other fields are integrating these technologies. Communication is obviously no exception.

For professionals in communication, public relations and marketing, artificial intelligence entails a profound reconfiguration. It raises questions about the appropriation of tools, but also about skills, qualification and reskilling. It is giving rise to new professional practices and, gradually, new occupations. It is also forcing organisations to revise their expectations of communication professionals.

But this is precisely where the question of Africa arises.

There is a major contradiction between, on the one hand, the speed at which artificial intelligence is transforming professions and, on the other, the very unequal conditions under which African populations can access the technologies that make participation in this transformation possible.

When I speak of Central African youth as « unevenly equipped », I am therefore not referring only to whether people own a computer or a smartphone.

The digital divide is far more complex.

It concerns Internet access, connection quality, the cost of data, access to electricity, the availability of equipment, mastery of digital tools, language skills, the ability to understand technologies, but also the possibility of using those technologies productively and strategically.

There is therefore a difference between

having access to a technology and being able to appropriate it.

That is a fundamental distinction.

A young person may own a smartphone without having the skills required to use artificial intelligence in their academic or professional journey. An organisation may have a social-media presence without having the capacity to build a genuine digital strategy. An institution may have an Internet connection without possessing the human skills required to turn that connection into a real organisational advantage.

Digital empowerment therefore cannot be reduced to distributing tools.

It requires creating the conditions for people to appropriate them.

This is where I see the first risk:

if we deploy artificial intelligence in an environment where digital inequalities remain very strong, AI can indeed become an accelerator of inequality.

Let us take a very simple example.

Imagine an organisation based in Douala or Yaoundé that decides to build a communication strategy relying 70% on social networks, digital content production, artificial-intelligence tools and data analysis.

On paper, the strategy may be perfectly coherent.

But the organisation wants to reach populations living in rural areas or remote communities. It may then be confronted with a completely different reality: much weaker connectivity, or even no connectivity in some areas, difficulties accessing electricity, insufficient equipment, high connection costs and populations that do not necessarily have the same digital skills as those in major metropolitan areas.

We cannot therefore ask a population that does not have the same infrastructure to participate in a digital system designed for a hyperconnected population.

This is where the concept of

measured communication takes on its full meaning: we must be able to measure the context before we measure communication.

An organisation cannot simply decide that from now on it will communicate exclusively through social media because that corresponds to global trends. It must ask itself: where are my audiences? What equipment do they have? What is their level of connectivity? What are their uses? What language do they use? Who are their community relays? Which traditional channels remain important? What level of trust is placed in the different means of communication?

In other words,

technology must adapt to social realities, not the other way around.

This question becomes even more important when we talk about communication for development.

Take the case of an NGO based in Yaoundé that wants to support farmers in rural communities. The organisation can use artificial intelligence to analyse agricultural data, produce educational content, translate information, prepare awareness campaigns or optimise certain internal processes.

But that does not mean the populations concerned automatically have the means to access those innovations.

Communication must therefore be considered at several levels: the organisation, its field teams, community leaders, local focal points, associations, local authorities and the populations themselves.

Artificial intelligence can strengthen this architecture, but it cannot replace it.

That is an essential distinction.

AI must be a tool for augmenting human capabilities, not a substitute for social connection.

I pay particular attention to this issue because communication is fundamentally a relational profession. We work on trust, understanding, influence, mediation, reputation, participation and dialogue.

If we assume that artificial intelligence can replace human relationships, we risk losing one of the fundamental dimensions of our profession.

Artificial intelligence can produce content. It can analyse a considerable mass of data. It can identify trends, facilitate translation, accelerate research, generate materials or help a professional make a decision.

But on its own it cannot understand the full complexity of a territory, the unspoken realities of a community, the historical wounds of a population, local power relations, the symbolism of a place or the trust that exists between a community leader and the population.

That is why I advocate an approach to artificial intelligence that is simultaneously

technological, human and territorial.

We must also accept that Africa is not starting from the same point as the most technologically advanced countries.

While a professional based in Tokyo, New York, Paris, Accra or Rabat may already be asking how to optimise the strategic use of artificial intelligence in their profession, some populations in other parts of the world may still be dealing with much more fundamental problems: access to electricity, the Internet, digital equipment or even basic training.

It would therefore be dangerous to try to apply the same technological trajectory everywhere.

Africa must of course participate fully in the artificial-intelligence revolution, but it must be able to do so from the standpoint of its own realities.

That requires investment in infrastructure first of all.

Access to electricity must be strengthened, connectivity improved, territorial inequalities in Internet access reduced, access to equipment facilitated and digital infrastructure developed that can sustainably support AI use.

But infrastructure is not enough.

We must also invest massively in

skills.

We need to train students, teachers, professionals, entrepreneurs, civil servants and association leaders to use these technologies. And that training must not simply teach people how to use a tool.

It must teach them to understand what they are doing with that tool.

This is where ethics becomes decisive.

A professional who uses artificial intelligence must be capable of questioning data bias, confidentiality, intellectual property, disinformation, manipulation of audiences, transparency around generated content and human responsibility behind a decision made with the help of an algorithmic system.

The real skill in the world of AI will therefore not simply be knowing how to use a tool.

It will be knowing when to use it, why to use it, how to use it and, above all, when not to use it.

That is precisely what I mean by ethical communication in the age of artificial intelligence.

We must also think about languages.

Africa is an extraordinarily multilingual continent. Yet if artificial-intelligence tools are mainly optimised for certain major international languages, part of the African population risks becoming even more marginalised.

The challenge is therefore also to encourage the development of tools capable of better taking African languages, African cultural contexts and African information realities into account.

Africa must not remain merely a consumer of technologies designed elsewhere.

It must also become a producer of data, knowledge, innovation and solutions.

This is a question of sovereignty.

We must gradually be able to move from a logic of consuming artificial intelligence to a logic of

co-constructing artificial intelligence.

That means encouraging African universities, researchers, startups, technology companies, governments and civil-society organisations to work together to develop solutions suited to our realities.

For communication, this issue is particularly strategic.

We need professionals capable of understanding both technological issues and social realities. We will need communication professionals capable of working with data, understanding algorithms and mastering AI tools, but also understanding audience psychology, cultural dynamics, territories and the mechanisms of trust.

This combination will probably constitute one of the most important skill sets of the coming years.

Ultimately, artificial intelligence should not lead us to ask only:

« What can AI do? »

We must also ask:

« What do we want AI to enable our societies to do? »

The first question is technological.

The second is political, social, economic and ethical.

And it is this second question that seems essential to me for Africa.

If we use artificial intelligence only to automate tasks that already exist, we may miss its transformative potential.

But if we use it to broaden access to knowledge, improve education, facilitate access to information, strengthen public services, support entrepreneurs, improve health systems, develop agriculture, support territories and expand young people's capabilities, then AI can indeed become a tremendous instrument of empowerment.

But that empowerment must be inclusive.

It must not benefit only those who live in major cities, have excellent Internet connections, speak English and have access to the best equipment.

Otherwise, we will create a new form of divide: no longer only a digital divide, but an

algorithmic divide.

Some people will have access to artificial intelligence and will be able to increase their capacity for production, learning and innovation considerably, while others will remain outside this transformation.

This perspective was already at the heart of my essay and of the reflection developed for the #NextInLine Changemakers 2025 competition. The question was therefore not simply whether artificial intelligence was an opportunity or a threat.

The real question was

under what conditions it can become an opportunity for everyone.

And I believe the answer rests on four requirements:

access, skills, ethics and adaptation to local realities.

Access, because we cannot talk about empowerment without infrastructure.

Skills, because a tool people have not been trained to use can become a new source of dependency.

Ethics, because any powerful technology can also be used to manipulate, exclude or misinform.

And local adaptation, because solutions designed for Tokyo, Paris or New York cannot necessarily be transposed unchanged to Bertoua, Garoua-Boulaï, Ebolowa, Ambam, Bafang or a remote rural community.

Ultimately, this is where the connection lies between artificial intelligence and my thinking about communication.

The development of communication practices is inseparable from technological development and, more broadly, from the development of African societies.

We cannot ask communication professions to transform through artificial intelligence while leaving part of our populations outside the digital transformation.

The transformation must be collective.

It must be territorial.

It must be inclusive.

And above all, it must remain profoundly human.

Because the real issue for artificial intelligence in Africa will not be whether we possess the same tools as other continents.

The real issue will be whether we are able to transform those tools into new capabilities for our societies without abandoning those who are still standing at the edge of the digital road.

I would first like to commend Samantha Strauss's reflection, whose analyses demonstrate, in my view, a genuine appetite for knowledge and for observing generational transformations. It is precisely this kind of thinking that forces us to shift our perspective. When we talk about Generation Z, digital technology or new communication practices, we cannot assume that there is a universal Generation Z with the same references, the same aspirations, the same relationship with brands and the same cultural practices.

A generation is always situated.

It is situated within a history, a culture, an economic environment, a political system, social practices and a particular relationship with technology. Generation Z in Cameroon is therefore not Generation Z in the United States. Nor is it the same as Generation Z in Japan, China or a European country. There are, of course, common characteristics linked to digital use, social networks and new forms of media consumption, but the meanings individuals attach to messages, symbols, brands and social practices remain deeply connected to their environment.

It is precisely for this reason that I defend the idea of African organisational narratives.

And when we speak about an African organisational narrative, this should certainly not be understood as closing African organisations off from outside influences or constructing communication that would be exclusively traditional. That is absolutely not what I mean.

Rather, it means enabling organisations to tell their story, their values, their products and their social usefulness through what makes sense to their audiences.

Ron Jabal and I often return to this idea:

brands must be aligned with what matters to people.

I find this sentence particularly important.

A brand is not built solely from a logo, a visual identity, a slogan or a product. It is built from a set of values, representations and social practices with which audiences can identify. That is what gradually constitutes its intangible capital.

At the global level, some major brands have understood this logic perfectly.

Coca-Cola, for example, has long built a significant part of its brand territory around sharing, conviviality and collective moments. Lego works extensively around creativity, play and connection, particularly intergenerational connection. What is being sold is not simply products; symbolic universes are being offered to audiences.

But what becomes interesting when we come to Central Africa is the way these major global values are

reinterpreted locally.

This is where I would use Orange Cameroon as an example.

Orange is a multinational company. Its brand identity is international. It has principles and a positioning that naturally extend beyond Cameroon's borders. But when it communicates in Cameroon, it cannot simply take a campaign designed elsewhere, translate it and distribute it unchanged.

Why?

Because Cameroonian consumers do not interpret signs in the same way as French, Japanese or American consumers.

The brand therefore has to create proximity.

And that proximity is achieved in particular through what I would call a

tropicalisation, or even an Africanisation, of the brand narrative.

Orange Cameroon therefore draws on elements from its social and cultural environment that allow the brand to be perceived not only as a multinational operating in Cameroon, but as a brand that understands Cameroon and speaks to its audiences in their language.

This is particularly visible in creative strategy.

Some campaigns use expressions from everyday speech, popular formulations, Cameroonian French, Franco-English, Pidgin English and expressions that circulate in society and belong to the everyday world of audiences.

Expressions such as

« Come, let's dance », as well as certain words, turns of phrase and popular expressions used in campaigns, are not merely creative devices. They serve a strategic function.

They allow the brand to say implicitly:

« I know you. I speak like you. I understand your codes. »

And it is precisely here that part of communication effectiveness is determined.

The consumer no longer receives only an advertising message from a large corporation. They recognise something from their own world in the message.

The brand then becomes culturally closer.

This proximity is not created through language alone.

It also comes through visual signs, behaviours, represented situations, cultural references, music, rhythms, colours, spaces and characters.

In other words, genuinely local communication mobilises both

linguistic signs and iconic signs that belong to the audience's universe of representation.

This is particularly important because communication never works only through what is explicitly said.

It also works through what is shown, suggested, evoked and recognised.

Let us take another example: certain beverage brands that have chosen to rely heavily on cultural and regional identities.

Some communications by brands such as Manyan, or other local brands or brands operating in Cameroon, draw on cultural references, dress codes, architecture, festive practices or representations associated with particular regions of the country to construct the idea of a product that is « from here ».

What is interesting is not simply the use of traditional clothing or a cultural element.

It is the fact that the brand is seeking to embed its narrative within a collective memory.

It is no longer simply saying: « here is our product ».

It is saying:

« here is what we share with you ».

That is a fundamental difference.

We can also observe this logic in certain communications around beauty and representations of women. Brands such as Orangina, for example, have been able to develop communication territories around beauty and create event-based initiatives such as the Miss Orangina concept.

Here again, the product is connected to a broader social universe.

Other brands will instead choose sport.

33 Export is an interesting example in this respect. In Cameroon, football is far more than a sporting spectacle. It represents an extremely powerful social, emotional and identity-based universe. Supporter culture, major competitions, discussions among friends and collective emotions around the Indomitable Lions and local football form an especially strong cultural territory.

A brand that understands this does not simply put a football in an advertisement.

It understands that football can become a

cultural brand territory.

The distinction is important.

In the first case, football is scenery.

In the second, it becomes a constitutive element of the brand narrative.

I could also use the example of Nestlé's Nido around the idea of maternal love.

Maternal love is obviously a universal value. But the way that value is expressed culturally is not universal.

A campaign aimed at the French market might show a mother taking her child to school, preparing breakfast or sharing a moment of closeness in an environment corresponding to the country's social codes.

In Cameroon, the same brand territory can be narrated differently.

A mother might be shown in a family courtyard, in a domestic environment that more closely reflects local realities, with objects and attitudes carrying particular meaning in our context.

A pestle and mortar, a particular way of dressing, a pair of slippers, a family space, certain gestures of affection or even particular forms of discipline can communicate far more than a long speech.

And this is where things become interesting.

In some contexts, a mother holding a slipper or a small switch might be interpreted as a negative representation of parenting. In the Cameroonian context, depending on the staging and the situation, the same objects may refer to something much more affectionate: a form of authority, closeness and even protection.

A sign therefore does not have a universal meaning.

Meaning also emerges from the cultural context in which the sign is interpreted.

That is why effective communication must know its audience.

It must know its references, habits, frustrations, aspirations, humour, imaginaries and sometimes even its contradictions.

That, for me, is the true localisation of a communication strategy.

And I think this issue is particularly important when it comes to multinational companies.

A multinational obviously has a global identity. But that global identity does not necessarily have to prevent the expression of local narratives.

Quite the opposite.

The strength of a major international brand may lie precisely in its ability to maintain global consistency while allowing its various local entities to speak to populations through their own codes.

This is what I would call

global consistency with local relevance.

The choice is therefore not between globalisation and Africanisation.

We need to build a dialogue between the two.

And this principle also applies to institutional organisations, NGOs, public companies, local authorities and development organisations.

An NGO working with rural populations in Cameroon cannot simply import a communication model developed for a European organisation and consider its mission accomplished because the model worked in Europe.

It must understand the territory.

It must understand the languages.

It must understand traditional and administrative authorities.

It must understand community decision-making mechanisms.

It must understand intergenerational relationships.

It must understand beliefs, habits, patterns of information circulation and forms of trust.

And above all, it must understand that populations are not simply

targets.

They are stakeholders.

This brings us back to the question of organisational communication that we defend within ACOMA.

Communication should not only seek to attract attention.

It should also seek to create connection.

It should enable an organisation to become understandable to its environment and, conversely, enable the organisation to understand its environment.

It is this logic that allows us to move from communication as dissemination to genuinely strategic communication.

And I believe Central Africa possesses extraordinary richness from which to construct these new narratives.

We have considerable cultural diversity. We have languages, expressions, music, imaginaries, traditions, social practices, forms of solidarity and community mechanisms that can nourish communication strategies.

But there is a trap we must avoid:

Africanising communication does not mean folklorising Africa.

That is very important.

Putting traditional fabric in an advertisement, having a few people dance to African music or using a few words in a local language is not enough to produce African communication.

Cultural rootedness goes much deeper.

It requires understanding the values, representations, aspirations and social dynamics that genuinely structure audiences.

Otherwise, we fall into a form of African aesthetics without genuine cultural depth.

Communication that is truly rooted in African realities is communication that understands

why a symbol matters, why an expression makes people laugh, why a practice creates closeness, why a situation generates trust and why certain representations may, by contrast, provoke rejection.

This is where research and professional practice must enter into dialogue.

The African communication professional of tomorrow should therefore not simply be an excellent communication technician. They must also be an observer of their society.

They must know their environment.

They must be able to read cultural transformations.

They must understand new generations.

They must understand changing relationships with media.

They must know what circulates on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook or WhatsApp, but also what circulates in markets, neighbourhoods, families, universities, churches, chiefdoms, associations and communities.

Because sometimes,

the best insight for a campaign is not found in a market study; it is found in people's everyday lives.

This is precisely what we need to learn to do in Africa: produce our own insights, develop our own narratives and build our own reference frameworks.

We should not be condemned to importing narrative models designed elsewhere.

We can learn from others, of course. We should even do so.

But learning is not copying.

Being inspired is not mechanically transposing.

And opening ourselves to the world does not mean giving up our own capacity to produce meaning.

That is why I defend the idea of communication that is both

global in its standards and local in its narratives.

Orange Cameroon strikes me as a particularly interesting example in this respect: an international brand that retains its global identity while seeking to speak in Cameroon through Cameroonian codes.

And this is probably where one of the major challenges of organisational communication in Africa lies:

moving from a model in which Africa is simply a market to which campaigns are adapted to a model in which Africa also becomes a space for producing narratives, insights and strategies that can, in turn, inspire the world.

Because the ultimate objective should not simply be to determine how foreign brands can communicate better in Africa.

We must also begin to ask ourselves:

What can African brands, African organisations and African communication professionals contribute to the world in terms of storytelling, creativity, proximity, solidarity and understanding audiences?

Only under this condition can we genuinely speak of African organisational narratives.

And it is also under this condition that communication in Africa will gradually cease to be merely a space for applying models and become a genuine space for producing knowledge, practices and innovation.

These three perspectives have indeed shaped my conception of professional ethics, but above all they have taught me one thing: we cannot think about communication ethics only from books, only from business or only from a professional organisation. The three perspectives have to be confronted with one another.

The academic perspective helps us understand what rigorous professional practice should look like. The entrepreneurial perspective allows us to measure how that rigour withstands—or sometimes fails to withstand—the constraints of reality. And the associative perspective allows us to step back and ask what kind of profession we collectively want to build.

Let me take a teaching situation to illustrate this tension.

Imagine a lecturer in a communication school in Yaoundé explaining to students certain fundamental principles of public relations, including the importance of ethics, transparency and respect for professional rules. The students might then reply: « Sir, that is what you teach us, but when we went on placement, we saw completely different practices. »

That reaction from students is extremely interesting.

It reveals a difficulty we encounter in many professions:

the gap between the standards being taught and certain practices observed in the field.

But I do not think we should conclude from this that education is theoretical or disconnected from reality. On the contrary, the role of education is precisely to give future professionals reference points that allow them to distinguish between what is done and what should be done.

A communication school should not merely teach students to reproduce existing practices. It should also teach them to question those practices.

Because a professional practice can be common without necessarily being good.

It can be tolerated without being ethical.

It can be old without being relevant.

And it can even be widespread while being contrary to international standards of the profession.

That is why I strongly defend the idea of education that does not stop at transmitting theoretical knowledge, but enables students to understand

good professional practices, international standards, ethical principles and the responsibilities that come with practising these professions.

The objective is therefore not to set the university against the field.

On the contrary, we need to create permanent dialogue between the two.

That is precisely what my academic work has helped me understand.

When we work on organisational communication, development projects or interactions between organisations and populations, we discover that communication is not simply a matter of producing materials.

It carries responsibilities.

When an organisation communicates with a population, it produces representations. It can influence behaviour. It can create trust or mistrust. It can encourage participation or, conversely, create the impression that decisions have already been taken.

Ethics therefore becomes a central issue.

It does not simply consist in asking: « Is this message legal? »

It also consists in asking:

« Is this message honest? Does it respect the audience's intelligence? Is it manipulative? Does it conceal important information? Does it respect stakeholders? Does it genuinely create value for the organisation and for society? »

This is the conception of ethics that I also try to carry into my entrepreneurial practice with 10 Com.

Because when you move from the academic world into business, you immediately discover another reality.

Business is subject to constraints: deadlines, budgets, commercial objectives, pressure from executives, client expectations, competition, emergencies and sometimes crises.

And it is precisely in those moments that ethics is truly tested.

It is relatively easy to talk about ethics when everything is going well.

The real question is what you do when a client asks for something that is not consistent with good practice.

What do you do when a manager wants to launch a campaign even though no diagnosis has been carried out?

What do you do when an organisation wants to communicate immediately even though it has no data?

What do you do when a director wants to produce a campaign simply because they « like » an idea?

What do you do when the materials have already been designed before the communication strategy has even been defined?

I have encountered this kind of situation.

It is not unusual for a professional to be asked to « manage the communication » of a project when the communication project has already been entirely conceived by people who do not necessarily have communication expertise.

Sometimes you are told: « We are already preparing the flyers, posters and visuals. Now we would like you to take charge of the communication. »

But in that case, what are you really being asked to manage?

Very often, you are being asked to manage the consequences of a decision that has already been made without a strategy.

And when the campaign fails, the communication professional can easily become the person held responsible.

This is what I deliberately and provocatively call

« communication just-do-it-ism »: the tendency to believe that all you have to do is communicate for something to work.

As though communication were some kind of layer that could be applied to any project at the last minute.

As though a poster, a video, a press release or a social-media campaign could, on its own, solve an organisation's structural problems.

Yet

communication cannot repair what was not thought through upstream.

A bad strategy does not become a good strategy because attractive visuals are added to it.

An organisation that does not know its audiences will not understand them better simply because it has a community manager.

A campaign built without data does not become strategic simply because it is distributed across several platforms.

This is precisely where my entrepreneurial experience strengthens my ethical conviction.

I believe a communication professional also has an advisory responsibility.

Their role is not simply to execute.

Sometimes they must know how to say no.

Sometimes they must know how to say: « We need to start with an audit. »

Sometimes they must say: « We need to know our audiences better. »

Sometimes they must say: « We need to review the positioning. »

Sometimes they must say: « This campaign does not address the problem you are trying to solve. »

And sometimes that means refusing a collaboration.

Personally, there have been occasions when I have declined collaborations because I could see that management had a conception of communication that was incompatible with the way I understand this profession.

This is not a question of pride.

It is a question of professional consistency.

Sometimes I would rather lose a commercial opportunity than participate in a project that I know from the outset is based on a mistaken conception of communication and risks further discrediting the profession afterwards.

This is where the entrepreneurial dimension directly meets the ethical dimension.

Ethics is not merely a declaration of principle displayed on a website.

It has a cost.

It can lead you to turn down a client.

It can lead you to lose a contract.

It may force you to explain to an executive that their idea is not necessarily the best one.

It may even force you to take a position when your immediate economic interest would push you to accept.

But it is precisely this ability to arbitrate between immediate interest and long-term professional interest that builds a practitioner's credibility.

The third perspective is ACOMA.

As founding president of a network of communication professionals, my responsibility is no longer limited to what I do personally.

It extends to the conception of the profession that we collectively want to develop.

That is an important difference.

When I work in an entrepreneurial setting, I am responsible for my decisions and those of my organisation.

When I work in academia, I am engaged in producing and transmitting knowledge.

But when I chair ACOMA, I must also think about the profession as a whole.

What kind of communication professional do we want to train?

What standards do we want to promote?

What place do we want to give ethics?

What kind of relationship do we want to build with organisations?

What recognition do we want to obtain from institutions?

And above all, what image do we want society to have of our professions?

It is from this perspective that the partnership with the International Public Relations Association takes on particular importance.

IPRA notably allows us to compare our practices with international standards and to engage in dialogue with professionals working in different environments.

But here again, the objective is not to mechanically copy international models.

It is to understand the standards, discuss them and reflect on how they can be appropriated within African realities.

I believe professional ethics should be one of the points of convergence between these different dimensions.

It should help us build a profession that is competent but also responsible.

A profession that is innovative but does not assume that everything technologically possible is necessarily professionally acceptable.

A profession that performs, but does not measure performance only in terms of visibility or commercial results.

A profession capable of defending the interests of its client organisations while respecting the audiences to whom it speaks.

Because the communication professional is often positioned between several interests.

They must understand their organisation.

They must understand their client.

They must understand audiences.

They sometimes need to understand institutions.

They sometimes need to engage with the media.

And they must also preserve their own professional integrity.

That is an extremely demanding position.

Take artificial intelligence today.

It offers extraordinary possibilities for communication: automation, content production, data analysis, personalisation, monitoring, translation, image generation, and so on.

But the fact that a tool makes something possible does not mean we should necessarily do it.

The communication professional must therefore be capable of setting limits.

Can we use an AI-generated image without disclosing its origin when that image purports to represent a real situation?

Can we automatically produce hundreds of pieces of content without checking their accuracy?

Can we use personal data without considering consent?

Can we manipulate an audience's emotions simply because algorithms make it easier to identify its vulnerabilities?

These questions show that ethics is not an optional extra.

It is becoming a

professional skill.

And this is precisely the conception I want to defend.

In my view, the good communication professional is not simply the person who knows how to produce a beautiful campaign.

It is the person who understands why they are doing it, for whom they are doing it, with what data, with what consequences and within what limits.

It is the person capable of saying to their organisation: « Here is what we can do, but here is also what we must not do. »

It is this advisory posture that, in my view, allows communication to move beyond a simple execution logic.

And it also explains my attachment to professionalisation.

In our professions, we still have people who enter communication without specific training, sometimes because they did not find their place elsewhere or because they believe communication is accessible to everyone.

Everyone can communicate.

But not everyone can necessarily

practise communication professionally.

The distinction is important.

Someone may know how to use Facebook, TikTok, Instagram or Canva without thereby being a communication professional.

A professional must understand strategies, audiences, organisations, data, media, risks, ethics, evaluation methods and the responsibilities associated with their profession.

That is precisely why we must strengthen dialogue between universities and the professional world.

Universities must be able to listen to the field.

The field must be able to feed research.

Professional associations must be able to contribute to structuring the professions.

And companies must be able to recognise the value of professional expertise.

These three dimensions must not operate separately.

Academia teaches us to think. Entrepreneurship forces us to act. Associative engagement forces us to think beyond ourselves.

That is probably the best way to summarise the influence of these three perspectives on my conception of ethics.

Research taught me rigour.

Business taught me responsibility.

Associative engagement taught me the collective dimension of the profession.

And their intersection led me to one conviction:

we cannot ask communication to be credible in society if we do not ourselves build a credible profession.

That credibility rests on skills, of course.

It rests on results.

It rests on innovation.

But it also rests, and perhaps above all, on integrity.

Because a profession does not become respectable simply because it is visible.

It becomes respectable when it is capable of giving itself rules, respecting them and ensuring that they are respected.

This is the ambition I want to carry through ACOMA: to contribute, at our level, to a communication profession that is better trained, better structured, more widely recognised and, above all, more conscious of its responsibilities.

Because ultimately, professional ethics is not merely a matter of individual morality.

It is a question of collective trust.

And if we want organisations, institutions and populations to trust communication professionals, we must be able to demonstrate through our practices that this trust is deserved.

To understand this reciprocity, we must first acknowledge a reality: in several French-speaking African countries, and particularly in Central Africa, communication and public relations still suffer from insufficient structuring and depth as professions. We have professionals, training programmes, agencies, communication departments and a multitude of practices, but we do not always have a sufficiently consolidated framework clearly defining the conditions of practice, responsibilities, standards and development prospects for these professions. It is precisely in this space that the partnership between ACOMA and IPRA takes on its full meaning. The challenge is obviously not to bring international standards down to Africa and apply them mechanically, but to create an ongoing dialogue between what international experience has produced and what African realities teach us. IPRA brings historical depth, international experience and a set of references in public relations and professional ethics; ACOMA, for its part, brings knowledge of local contexts, practices and the institutional, economic, cultural and social constraints specific to Central Africa. Reciprocity must therefore work in both directions: Central Africa must be able to learn from the world, but the world must also be able to learn from African experience.

Concretely, this work must begin with an in-depth reading of national environments. Before imagining new rules, we need to look at what already exists. In Cameroon, for example, communication is already governed by different legal texts depending on the field concerned, whether advertising, telecommunications, broadcasting, data protection or other sectors. The question we should therefore ask is not simply: « What new text should be created? », but rather: « What is the actual state of the framework governing organisational communication today, and what gaps do we need to fill? » We must identify the existing texts, understand their scope, assess their effectiveness and determine the areas that remain insufficiently regulated, particularly institutional communication, public relations, digital communication, influence, sensitive communication, crisis communication, acceptability communication and the use of artificial intelligence. ACOMA and IPRA could therefore contribute to comparative work, studies, publications, professional meetings and recommendations that would gradually build a reference framework that is neither a copy of an external model nor a completely isolated construction. Rather, it would be a common professional foundation based on international principles—integrity, transparency, responsibility, respect for audiences and truthfulness of information—but interpreted in the light of each country's legal, social and cultural realities.

Finally, this reciprocity must lead to something much more operational:

the gradual construction of a shared professional culture in Africa. This can involve joint training, publications, African case studies, exchanges between professionals, mentoring programmes, research, academic and professional meetings, but also the development of recommendations or ethical reference frameworks adapted to the different communication professions. The objective is not to freeze the rules of the profession once and for all, because communication professions evolve with technology, societies and organisations. Rather, we need to build a living framework capable of evolving with practices. It is this combination of international standards and an intelligent understanding of local contexts that seems fundamental to me. We must neither reject international standards in the name of our specificities, nor abandon our realities in the name of standards designed elsewhere. We must create a space for dialogue in which global experience nourishes African practices and, conversely, African experiences help enrich global thinking about communication. In my view, that is the true strategic value of the partnership between ACOMA and IPRA: not merely importing rules, but working together to build a communication profession that is more legitimate, more responsible, better structured and genuinely adapted to the societies in which it is practised.

First, an important clarification is required: the Central African Communicators' Fair, initially planned for 2026, has, in light of the enthusiasm generated and the new prospects that have opened up around the project, been postponed to October 2027 and repositioned as the African Communicators' Fair. The African Communication Awards remain fully part of this new ambition. This change of scale in fact requires us to be even more demanding about the governance of the awards. Our intention is not simply to create another trophy ceremony, but to establish a professional recognition mechanism capable of distinguishing practices that bring real value to communication, organisations and, more broadly, African societies. The criteria will therefore be built around clearly established principles: strategic relevance, creativity, innovation, quality of execution, measurable impact, ethics, sustainability, ability to adapt to local contexts and contribution to the development of the profession. Depending on the category, some criteria may naturally be weighted differently. A campaign will not be assessed in exactly the same way as an agency or a young professional. But in every case, we want to avoid a logic based solely on the candidate's visibility, reputation or financial power. A campaign produced with considerable resources should not automatically be rated more highly than an initiative designed with limited resources but demonstrating genuine strategic relevance and proven impact. It is precisely this ability to look at professional quality beyond the resources mobilised that should characterise the African Communication Awards.

The composition of the jury will have to meet the same requirement for balance. We envisage a

multidisciplinary, pan-African jury made up of professionals from different sub-regions of the continent, selected primarily on the basis of their experience, expertise and professional credibility. The aim will therefore not be to form a jury representing only one institution or one country. On the contrary, the objective is to bring different perspectives together and reduce as far as possible biases linked to geographical, professional or institutional affiliations. Experienced professionals from communication, public relations, marketing, digital communication, institutional communication and related fields may sit on the jury, alongside academics and international experts. ACOMA will naturally play a role in structuring and governing the mechanism, but we also want the jury to benefit from external perspectives in order to strengthen its independence. Internationally recognised figures in communication and public relations may therefore be involved in the process, depending on their availability and interest in the project. Above all, the idea is that no one should be both judge and party: jury members will have to declare any potential conflicts of interest and withdraw from assessing an application whenever a professional, institutional or personal relationship could affect their impartiality. Likewise, jury members will not be able to take part in evaluating their own campaigns, those of their organisation or candidates with whom they have a direct relationship.

Finally, we want the credibility of the African Communication Awards to rest as much on the

evaluation method as on the names of the people serving on the jury. Applications will have to be documented and assessed using a common scoring framework, with criteria known in advance and, where relevant, evidence allowing the results achieved to be evaluated: objectives, context, strategy, target audiences, mechanisms deployed, innovation, results and impact. We also want African realities to be taken into account in the assessment. It would indeed be unfair to mechanically apply to a small Central African agency the same quantitative benchmarks as to a major international agency with considerably larger budgets. That does not mean lowering the level of expectation; it means assessing performance in relation to context, objectives and available resources. Transparency will therefore rest on rules announced in advance, a documented procedure, rigorous management of conflicts of interest and a clear separation between organising the competition and evaluating applications. Above all, we want the winners to be able to say at the end of the process: « We were recognised because our work was assessed according to professional criteria and because we performed better on those criteria. » It is this requirement that will allow the African Communication Awards to move beyond a merely honorary logic and gradually become a genuine instrument for showcasing, professionalising and stimulating the communication professions in Africa.

I think we must first avoid a fairly common mistake when talking about young people: assuming that simply giving them a platform is enough for them to be genuinely heard. For me, being heard does not simply mean having a few minutes to speak on a panel or appearing in a photograph at an event. The real question concerns the capacity for expression, proposal-making and, progressively, decision-making. It is precisely on this distinction that we want to work within ACOMA. Young people must not simply be a category of audience that we invite to our activities; they must become an active component in building our network and transforming the communication professions. That is why we want to multiply the spaces in which young professionals and students can present their ideas, work, innovations and projects before experienced professionals, companies, agencies, institutions and partners. As part of the future African Communicators' Fair, several mechanisms are therefore being considered to place young people in situations where they can express themselves and engage in professional confrontation, including the « Communication Battles », which will allow young talents to defend their ideas, strategies or approaches before an audience of professionals. We also want the African Communication Awards to include categories specifically devoted to young talent, so that professional recognition is not reserved for people already established in the sector.

But exposure is only a first level. We must then create

mechanisms for connection and transmission. With this in mind, we are also working on an editorial platform devoted to communication, marketing and public relations, which should become a genuine interface between generations. The objective is to allow young professionals to present their experiences, tell their stories, share their practices and, above all, showcase the projects they are carrying. We want to create a space in which the young communication professional is no longer simply the person listening to an experienced professional, but someone who can also contribute something to the profession. We must move beyond this vertical conception in which the elder necessarily possesses the knowledge and the young person is condemned to receive it. Today, a young professional may possess extremely advanced expertise in artificial intelligence, content creation, new digital platforms, data, new media uses or digital communities that some more experienced professionals have not yet mastered. Transmission must therefore work in both directions. Elders can pass on their experience, knowledge of organisations, strategic perspective and professional memory; younger people can bring new skills, new practices and new ways of thinking about audiences. Mentoring must therefore not be a relationship of domination, but a relationship of reciprocal learning.

Finally, if we genuinely want to avoid reproducing the hierarchies we criticise, young people must be present not only in spaces for expression but also in certain

spaces for design and decision-making. This is a point to which I am particularly attached. A professional association that claims to be preparing the future of communication cannot build that future without the very people who are going to inhabit it. This means young people must be able to participate in designing certain programmes, reflecting on new professions, working groups, thematic commissions and certain ACOMA bodies responsible for developing proposals. The objective is not to give them a symbolic place because they are young, but to give them a place because they have skills, ideas and a capacity to contribute. This is also why we want to create mechanisms that allow their proposals to move upward and, where relevant, be transformed into concrete initiatives. I firmly believe that a professional organisation should not simply speak to young people; it must learn to speak with them and, progressively, allow them to speak for themselves. Only under this condition will we avoid reproducing the hierarchies we are precisely trying to overcome. ACOMA's objective is therefore not to build a generation of young professionals waiting for their turn to become the system's new « elders ». It is to build a professional culture in which experience confers legitimacy, but age alone never constitutes a title of ownership over speech, ideas or decision-making power.