Internet & Online Safety · Cameroon
Online safety & content laws in Cameroon (2026)
Cameroon shaded by its internet & online safety status
Cameroon regulates online content primarily through its 2010 Cybersecurity and Cybercrime Law, which contains vague 'false news' and 'public order' provisions routinely used to prosecute online speech and silence dissent. The government has imposed repeated internet shutdowns and social media blocks — most recently during the October 2025 post-election protests — a pattern that Freedom House classifies as 'Not Free.' A new Data Protection Law (No. 2024/017) was enacted in December 2024, and a 2025 ministerial decision mandates all public digital platforms to register on a state-managed aggregation infrastructure, deepening state control over the online environment.
Key points
Law No. 2010/012 (December 2010) criminalises online 'false news' and 'disturbance of public order' under Articles 78 and 113, with penalties of up to six months' imprisonment, but lacks precise definitions, enabling arbitrary enforcement against journalists and activists.
Cameroon imposed a 93-day social media and internet blackout in its Anglophone regions in 2017–2018, costing an estimated $38 million. A further shutdown and social-media block (TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Telegram) was imposed on 23 October 2025 amid protests over the presidential election, with Proton VPN signups from Cameroon surging 3,000%.
Law No. 2024/017 on Personal Data Protection was adopted on 23 December 2024, making Cameroon the 38th African country to enact such a law. It prohibits processing of sensitive categories (health, biometric, political, religious data) and requires controllers to comply by June 2026. A dedicated independent Data Protection Authority is to be constituted by presidential decree.
A Ministerial Decision of 4 April 2025 created the National Electronic Communications Aggregation Platform (NECAP), managed by state postal operator CAMPOST, and gave digital platforms three months to connect and register. ART sets access rules; ANTIC issues cybersecurity compliance certificates — embedding state oversight into platform operations.
ANTIC (National Agency for ICT) oversees cybersecurity certification and electronic-signature infrastructure; ART (Telecommunications Regulatory Board) licenses operators and sets interconnection rules. Neither body operates as an independent online-safety regulator in the consumer-protection sense.
Cameroon acceded to the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime by Decree No. 2022/169 of 23 May 2022. Despite this international alignment, Freedom House rates Cameroon 'Not Free' in Freedom in the World 2026, and Reporters Without Borders ranked it 131st of 180 countries in press freedom in 2025, reflecting the wide gap between legal commitments and practice.
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