Monrovia-With Liberia edging toward the high-stakes 2029 presidential election and the ruling Unity Party (UP) and opposition Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) already dominating national debate, a new and dangerous front has opened: Artificial Intelligence.
NAYMOTE Liberia Executive Director Eddie D. Jarwolo is warning that Liberia must prepare now for AI-powered election disinformation, rather than waiting until campaigns are in full swing.
In an intervention titled “AI and Elections: Liberia Must Prepare Now,” posted on his official Facebook page on Friday, September 18, 2026, Jarwolo argued that AI could fundamentally alter Liberia’s electoral information environment by making it easy to produce convincing fake content and spread it at extraordinary speed.
The warning comes against a backdrop of an increasingly defined political rivalry.
The Unity Party of President Joseph Nyuma Boakai controls the executive, while the CDC of former President George Manneh Weah remains the principal opposition.
The two were separated by less than 8,000 votes in the first round of the 2023 presidential election – Weah with 804,087 votes and Boakai with 796,961, according to the National Elections Commission (NEC). Weah has since confirmed his intention to contest again in 2029.
That razor-thin margin and highly engaged partisan base, Jarwolo notes, creates fertile ground for false information to spread rapidly, especially as most Liberians now receive political news through Facebook, WhatsApp, TikTok and other digital platforms.
“What makes AI different is its ability to manufacture reality,” Jarwolo wrote.
According to him “a fabricated speech could be made to appear as though it came from President Boakai. A cloned voice could falsely appear to be former President Weah. A manipulated video could show either leader making statements never made. A fake NEC announcement could be designed to look so official that voters share it before verifying its source.”
“The danger is not limited to one party. Any candidate, party, election official or institution could become a target,” he stressed.
International IDEA and other global democracy watchdogs have already flagged deepfakes, synthetic audio and AI-enabled micro-targeting as emerging risks to elections worldwide, even as AI can also help election administration.
The challenge for Liberia is verification wherein traditional misinformation could be checked by comparing a claim to an authentic recording or document, against the fact that AI-generated material makes that difficult because the false content itself is manufactured to look like the original.
Jarwolo warned that in an intense UP-CDC contest, the line between legitimate campaign messaging and fabricated material could become dangerously blurred.
He feared a fake message targeting the UP could spark unnecessary controversy around government. A fake message targeting the CDC could inflame opposition supporters. A fake NEC result or directive could create confusion across all sides simultaneously.
Jarwolo’s proposal places the NEC at the center of the defense, not as a partisan actor but as the institution trusted to verify electoral information independently.
The NAYMOTE boss called on the NEC to take steps by establishing stronger cybersecurity for its systems, creating official digital verification channels where citizens can instantly confirm whether a statement, result or announcement is genuine, setting up monitoring and rapid-response mechanisms for AI-driven disinformation, and training staff and conduct simulation exercises to test Liberia’s ability to respond to AI-generated electoral crises.
The call aligns with NEC’s own 2026-2030 Strategic Plan, which identifies technological advancement and misinformation as key challenges to modernize the electoral system and deepen public trust ahead of 2029.
Jarwolo also urged the media to verify material before publication and direct audiences to authenticated sources, and challenged political parties themselves to establish quick-confirmation systems for controversial statements attributed to their leaders, to avoid information vacuums during moments of tension.
Importantly, Jarwolo said Liberia must neither fear nor reject AI, stressing “AI is not inherently an enemy of democracy. It can help voter education, translate electoral materials into local languages, improve data analysis and support inclusion. The risk is when it is weaponized without safeguards.”
The core of his message is that If voters cannot quickly determine what is authentic, false information will fill the gap, and in an election decided by a few thousand votes, that gap could decide the presidency.
“The objective is not to stop technology, but to ensure that truth travels faster than falsehood,” Jarwolo concluded, urging NEC, government, political parties, media and civil society to begin preparations now, while there is still time before 2029.
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