discover who. subscribe to the documentary on you tube. or river. news africa coming up in the next fifteen minutes. on politics nigerians get ready to. presidential elections to find out how the spread of news on affects the results. coming out. hot. head to the polls on sunday. the votes are counted.

mike welcome to news africa i'm glad you tuned in to elections coming up this weekend we're going to look at the poll in a moment but fest cynical way comment fifty seven year old president will be seeking a second term in office senegal's peaceful transition of power have been hailed as a beacon for africa tensions are rising this time and it's a problem of the ex-president abdulai awadi called for a boycott on the banning of election materials recent clashes between supporters of rival parties have left two dead and teamed up to organize votes count on important for peace and unity to help prevent election rigging. busy times at the headquarters of sue new election in dhaka volunteers have been working for

a week to assemble the observers kicks two thousand election observers will be deployed across the country. election observers must monitor the ballots and fill in the form noting how the ballot is progressing at the opening at midday and until the closing and the announcement of the results. on the first floor is the situation room this is where the data will arrive after observers collect it at polling stations the administrators here then responsible for the parallel vote calculation knowledge or involvement in the day the administrators will get the observer data through s.m.s. messages these messages will be fed into the database and the managers will try to process this data analyze it so that they can see what is going well and what's not going so well. meanwhile president macky cell was making the most of the time before polls open on the last day of his election campaign south towards different

neighborhoods in the capital. students have been bussed in to cheer for him they have reason to be optimistic makea cell is the front runner in the polls. turnout in the last election seven years ago is pretty low it's only fifty one percent this time around more people here seem keen to cause their vote especially young people and they're not put off by long queues to get their voters cards. come up just about. all the time is presented to them i cannot even told i'm so happy i've been here for three days in order to get my card. many young voters favor one of the president's main opponents those months on call tensions between supporters of different candidates have been high it's a. mature people we want peace for the elections and we want the winner to be respected we are a mature people and we want peace but you overlap in our party i don't trust

politicians or election administrators. preventing any potential fraud that is soo new elections mission it's the second time they've organized a parallel vote count this is an example see if. this kind of exercise helps to ease post-election tensions. because people get to find out everything about the elections through the observation chain and so that's the lesson that we should also employ as many citizens. ok and this is why. in the last election it's a pretty accurate they deviated only one percent from the official results for the five thousand people involved in the observation come paying the stakes are high but the volunteers here are ready to do that that. now what's up is hugely popular across africa especially in nigeria but it can be problematic to what's up

fake news can spread fast making it an ideal to two money believes voters in the upcoming election ahead of the polls on saturday we asked people on the streets of lagos how they use the social media. i use what's up every day now and then it is. i was out fishing. has it been tough i'm only like. what's on because he's easy to use and i use it to put in the kids and also get information not a. good one will or i don't worry. about it if it was to get that information i think if only occurred to me to my friend. look everything that you see was have you believe i feel it's out any information i

see myself ask but as a child media i know money before i see a lot. going for every. post i shoot then obviously. i don't so it seems like nigerians are pretty cautious what sub uses but that's not always the case says nick she's mine professor of them across the at the university of banning him who's just published a report on the use of what's up in nigeria cheeseman thank you for joining us and now you call it nigeria's fast what's up election why only seen a lot of elections in nigeria and they've often used in recent times social media but the use of whatsapp it's really been gaining pace and people in many countries in africa now use what's out way more than they would use e-mail weight more than they would use text messages or facebook missions so whatsapp is really becoming one of the dominant ways of communicating quickly and easily and at the mediate we

think is one of the most important ways of communicating in nigeria so that's what makes this nigeria's first whatsapp alexion. i to same time it's being used to spread fake news why is it such a powerful tool in the spread in fake news well there's two critical things one obviously works out is encrypted which means that the government or anyone else for that matter can actually tell what you're sending on whatsapp so people feel particularly protected now that's a good thing it can be used by civil society groups to promote human rights and to contest government abuse but it's also a dangerous thing in the sense that people who feel that they can push out messages without actually being punished or want to it might push out things that they know were not true and are actually dangerous and of course that's one of the things that we're seeing at the minute now it's important to say that once that doesn't invent these room straight rumors have always been an aspect of politics what it does is it helps them to circulate it's a bit like if you imagine going from

a situation where there were some rumors kind of laying around on the ground that bits of paper and then applying a phantoms and the found spritz them so all of the corners of the country because what's it works both in terms of the people that are on whatsapp talking to each other but also in terms of the way that whatsapp shapes the way that people talk about politics for example on radio shows with their friends in the community has a remarkably good reach swell sic news is that many a problem whatsapp is not going anywhere so how then do we tackle fake news spreading. this is a major challenge fail the one hand we know the political room is not going anywhere as you say whatsapp is so popular it's certainly not going anywhere we see whatsapp trying to do a set of measures that will think so for example we seem to use by what's out of smaller groups that prevent people from forwarding messages hundreds of times we've also seen other measures by whatsapp to try and fool people into make people think

about the kind of measures that they're the kind of messages that their circulation but the fundamental problem here is that while most of the things what's happened doing will be able to achieve is they'll make it more difficult to secularly fake news on whatsapp they will make it impossible to circulate that user wants out so people who are determined will still be able to do it i think what that means is we need to look at the other side not so much the people sending the messages but the people receiving and how can we cover those people to beat the messages more critically well know ted make cheese man professor of them across the at the university of birmingham thanks very much for the time my pleasure. now every african or a member of this nigerian or at least his voice. is known for bringing is social message into his music oh a new generation of musicians is following in his footsteps the project voice director is helping young artists to get their voices head and encouraging

listeners to get involved and go to the polls. rehearsal's are underway at the chocolate city music studios and lagos. these ten young musicians were selected from over four hundred hopefuls to join the project voice to represent which mentors up and coming artists with the social message they've taken part in workshops aimed at promoting political engagement among young people. i say that it's important to actually always speak out what if you have. and i feel like after leaving. is going to be a great difference because the songs that i put out some more conscious have spoken about but it's about governance about different things and there's no better time to talk about it than now you know it's been four years since i left election and.

you know being forgotten it's easy to remember something that is you know that happens to election period. joining some of nigeria's top entertainers for a series of concerts and only those with valid voters cons can attend. with elections looming engaging the country's young population is crucial. and music is a great way to do that say the project organizers. we have young people who are making socially coarseness music for good governance for elections for women's participation in governance and also for the private sector and private sector integrity. i'm so we can do this we must make music and train them and give them the platform to results and interest rates are nine zero and didn't hear us on the form and your answer was well so oxytocin was on hold government accountable.

music has often played an important role in one thousand year in elections with candidates calling on influential artists to support the voice to read project aims to get young music lovers to think for themselves about the politics they want for their country. from. now on a huge for the fan out of my favorites is go slow but that's it for now from d.w. news africa you can catch all our stories on our website and facebook page we leave you now with the speeches of the lead author will be king fela kuti enjoy it we'll see you next time bye for now.

eh. eh eh. eh here's what's coming up for the book. the mundus league every weekend here. we make up oh but we watch as folks that. we are the seven seven percent.

want to shape the continent's future. youngsters as they share their stories their dreams and their challenges. the seventy seven percent of. platforms. welcome to arts and culture i'm david leavitt's and you are here just in time to see hollywood roll out that famous red carpet for the most glamorous evening of the year yes we'll be talking about this weekend's oscars. also on the show acclaimed artist and set designer philip few who will be here to shed some light on his illuminated paintings. and where architecture meets fashion the bauhaus

inspired clothing of the berlin brand of hama. this sunday it's the ninety first academy awards and the pressure is not just on the nominees last year's oscar ceremony got the worst t.v. ratings in the prizes history and it's been drama ever since leaving this year's show without a host now the big hollywood studios are also on pins and needles because if the netflix film roma cleans up the prizes that could shake up the whole industry here's our look at this year's top contenders. the red carpet is rolled out for the ninety first oscar awards seventy two films with ten nominations each face off against each other mexican director alfonso clone is perhaps in pole position with his autobiographical film roma he is also nominated as best director and ideal where he won back in two thousand.