There are a lot of pundits out there declaring democracy promotion to be dead on arrival in the Trump era. But there’s still an important community of activists fighting for the cause against the odds and even winning.

“Democracy matters and democratic leadership matters, even in the face of a fast-moving crisis like the coronavirus,” says Jeffrey Smith, the founder and president of Vanguard Africa, a nonprofit which has worked closely with a number of successful, visionary leaders in this region and beyond.

“Like the routine gaslighting of women's experiences in Zimbabwe, impunity has also long been the norm,” Jeffrey Smith, executive director of Vanguard Africa, a nonprofit that focuses on democracy in the continent, told VICE News. “Authorities will continue to deny their role in the abductions and the torture. And the perpetrators will not be held accountable, further emboldening an already vicious, ruthless regime.”

According to Jeffrey Smith, founding director of the pro-democracy non-profit Vanguard Africa, this ruling style is indicative of a much deeper problem in Cameroon’s governance.

“The coronavirus pandemic is only the most recent example of Biya’s absence and lack of accountability,” he says. “We have the tendency to highlight the symptoms of these crises, be they public health or humanitarian, rather than the cause, which is a lack of accountable and democratic leadership.”

“If you criticize the WHO and Tedros, you’re somehow seen as a supporter of the Trump administration and their clearly self-serving attacks to shift blame from their own failure,” said Jeffrey Smith, director of Washington-based Vanguard Africa, a promoter of democracy. “On the other hand, if you defend Dr. Tedros and the WHO, you’re seen as somehow endorsing his comfort level with the world’s despots and dictators.”

“Yes, Dr. Tedros is the product of a deeply authoritarian regime. And he has long displayed an affinity for dictators,” Smith said. “The WHO does critical work and deserves support. And yes, the WHO also needs reform. All of these things can be true.”

Nic Cheeseman and Vanguard Africa’s Jeffrey Smith inform us that, “In countries like Rwanda and South Africa, the measures put in place to stop the spread of the virus are among the most restrictive in the world.”

These authors say, “Civil society must fight back.”

“Dr. Tedros is the product of a deeply authoritarian regime,” said Jeffrey Smith, director of Vanguard Africa, a U.S.-based consultancy that lobbies for democracy in Africa. “Dictatorships are bad for public health, both inside their borders and globally.”

Ethiopia has become more democratic under its new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, who took power in 2018. But before that, Mr. Smith said, it was a “highly repressive surveillance state in which a lack of government transparency was a hallmark.” And Dr. Tedros played a role in helping construct and maintain that state.

Paul Biya is known for taking long breaks away from the public eye, said Jeff Smith, the founding director of Vanguard Africa, a pro-democracy nonprofit organization. “It’s not an uncommon refrain to hear Cameroonians lament the fact that they have a ‘ghost president,’ ” he said.

However, Smith added, “his absence is really quite shocking during a time in which Cameroon has experienced the most cases and deaths due to the coronavirus in all of Central Africa.”

For some observers, Mr Embaló is the victim: an elected leader whose democratic victory is being opposed by the incumbent political elite. “[The PAIGC] are now digging in and do not want to relinquish power because they’ve become rich off the state’s largesse at the expense of the people,” said Jeffrey Smith, founding director of Vanguard Africa, a Washington-based non-profit group that supports free and fair elections in Africa.

“We are trying to galvanize this international attention on him and his cause and the People Power movement in general,” said Jeffrey Smith, founder of Vanguard Africa, a Washington-based organization that works to support democratic leaders on the continent.

“When you have a sustained international spotlight on a country,” says Smith, “that really emboldens people to go out and to protest and to speak their minds, and to criticize the government that has lorded over them for over three decades. When they go to queue for hours to vote in 2021, they will know, hopefully, that their votes won’t be in vain.”

 Jeffrey Smith, the founding director of Vanguard Africa, a United States pro-democracy group, says Harare must simply reform: “The fact that the government ... even attempted to influence U.S. policy in this way, really was an indication of their misplaced priorities. Instead of reforming Mugabe era laws, and instead of abiding by the rule of law, abiding by Zimbabwe’s own constitution, regional and international human rights obligations, they decided to go the route of spending hundreds of thousands dollars on PR and lobbying firms in Washington, DC. This exercise was never going to work.”