what's your story. of numbers and women especially in victims of violence and. take part and send us your story trying always to understand this new culture. nothing to turn off again you want to become a citizen. in full migrants your platform for reliable information. this is the new news africa coming out in the next fifteen minutes what's up on politics that's nigerians get ready to cost of gold in saturday's presidential elections to find out how the spread of think news of what's up but affects the results also coming out tensions aha sent to go ahead to the polls on sunday how come peace dementing up the votes are counted.

i am and he my god jr welcome to news africa i'm glad you tuned in to major elections coming up this weekend we're going to look at the polls for nigeria in a moment but fast cynical way comments fifty seven year old president will be seeking a second term in office senegal's peaceful transition have been hailed as a beacon for africa a 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 reasons clashes between supporters of rival parties have left to that. and you teamed up to organize the parlow votes count on important school for peace and unity and to help prevent election rigging

. busy times at the headquarters of sue new election into. volunteers have been working for a week to assemble the observers kits two thousand election observers will be deployed across the country. the election observers must monitor the ballots and fill in the form noting how the ballot is progressing at the opening day 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 are then responsible for the parallel vote calculation. field 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 sall was making the most of the time

before polls open on the last day of his election campaign cell 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 was pretty low it's only fifty one percent this time around more people here seem keen to cast their vote especially young people and they're not put off by long queues to get their voters cards. come out of the. world in the sun is the reason i didn't i cannot even talk 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 months uncle tensions between supporters of different candidates have been high if you look at this is an

achilles 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 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 if. you have 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 the cell that's the best and that which you also employ as many citizens. who can believe in this if you are. in the last election the figures were 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 think news can spread fast making it an ideal two to money police 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 whatsapp every day now and then if. i was out to. use it in the i'm only school i. was out because it is easy to use and i use it to phone the kids and also get information gathered. and one of four i just heard. about didn't because it gets information i think if only because you need to my thinking. not

everything that you see was that you believe i feel sound and information i see myself ask but as a shy media i know my need to do what i think it was a plot i don't post every. post before i shoot the numbers. so it seems like nigerians are pretty cautious what's up use this but that's not always the case says nick she's mine professor of them across the other university of banning him who's just published a report on the use of what's up in nigeria but she's man 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 has really been gaining pace and people in many countries in africa now use whatsapp way more than they would use email weight more than they

would use text messages or facebook message 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 don't same time it's being used to spread fake news why is this such a powerful tool in the spread in fake names 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 monitored might push out things that they know are not true and are actually dangerous and of course that's one of the things that

we're seeing and doing it now it's important to say that what's out doesn't invent these room straight rumors have always been an aspect of politics what it does is it talks and to circulate it's been 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 out 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 stefania problem what's up is not going anywhere so how then do we tackle big 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 they 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 they're secular it's in the fundamental problem here is that what most of the things what's happened doing be able to achieve is they'll make it more difficult to circulate fake news on whatsapp they will make it impossible to circulate that user wants out so people who are determined to 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 t.'s man professor of democrats the at the university of birmingham thank you very much for the time my pleasure. now every african or remember 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 their listeners to get involved and go to the polls. rehearsal is underway at the chocolate city music studios in 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 what shops aimed at promoting political engagement among young people . i say that it's important to always speak out what if you have done for me and i feel like after. this is going to be a great difference because the songs that i put out will be more conscious of spoken about but it's about different things and there's no better time to talk

about it than now you know it's been four years since i last election and. you know. 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 cards 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 cautious music for good governance for elections for women spot suspicion and governance and also for the private sector and private sector integrity. i'm so we ended it was to make music and train them and give them the platform to reach out some interest groups are not interested in getting insurance

on a form of insurance also an ox worth on hold government accountable. music has often played an important role in one thousand year in elections with candidates calling on influential artists for support the voice to read project aims to get young music lovers to think for themselves about the politics they want for their country. now a huge for the fan out of my favorites is go slow 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 late king fela kuti enjoy it we'll see you next time i thought.

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simply. to. discover. the i. subscribe to the documentary. 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 bow house inspired clothing of the berlin brand of mine. 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. on 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.