In Cameroon, a blind voter who cannot read Braille usually votes with someone else in the booth. That person reads the ballot, marks it, and folds it. The vote is counted. It is not secret.
CAMAB Women has made the same argument since 2018, when our president attended the Seventh National Consultation Forum convened by ELECAM: a blind voter should be able to cast a secret ballot without anyone reading it for her.
In October 2022 our president travelled to Ghana and trained with Dr Peter Obeng, Director of the Ghana Union of the Blind, on the tactile ballot jacket. The jacket is a simple thing. It is a sleeve that holds the ballot paper, with numbered cut-outs and raised markings, so that a voter who cannot read print can find the right box and mark it alone. CAMAB paid for that trip itself.
In June 2024, at Mbalmayo, our president was elected President of the national Elections Working Group. That November she attended the second national consultation convened by ELECAM. In May 2026 she represented Cameroon at the Africa Conference on Disability Inclusion in Electoral Processes in the Digital Era, in Dakar, and in June 2026 the restitution workshop was held at the UNDP conference hall in Yaounde.
We want to be accurate about where this has reached. The argument has been made, repeatedly, in the rooms where election procedure is decided, and it has been heard. Implementation is a different matter, and it is not finished. A tactile ballot jacket that exists in a training room is not the same as one available at every polling station.
That is the work that remains.
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