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On the basis of both comprehensive interviews conducted with actors responsible for economic and digital innovation policies and an analysis of a corpus of institutional documents including the Digital Cameroon 2020 strategic plan, this article seeks to throw light not only on the rationale for governmental policy towards increased digitization but also on the rhetoric that accompanies it. It is based on a (critical) political economy of communications, showing how governmental demands for digital innovation are part of a global dynamic of economic conversion, which favors creativity. It also shows how, in a situation of near civil war – one that is found especially in the Anglophone part of the country, which is thought of as Cameroon’s “Silicon Valley” – and against the backdrop of youth discontent and exclusion, the rhetoric about digital technology and creativity are at the heart of an effort to present Cameroon in a particular light: as a country that is in the midst of a complete economic transformation, or at least in a phase of transition towards becoming an emerging economy with full employment. References to digital innovation and creativity are attempts to hide the failure, or rather the absence, of a real economic and industrial policy and its effects, in particular, on young people.