By Apolo Kakaire and Doreen Elizabeth Namuyanja |
The rapid pace of innovation and technological development has created a new generation of human rights challenges including deepening inequalities, expanding surveillance, environmental degradation and new barriers to participation. Individuals with unreliable internet access or limited digital literacy, undocumented people and persons with disabilities are among the most affected. Companies, whether in the technology sector or not, often lack the guidance, tools, and accumulated knowledge to assess and address the human rights impacts of their digital operations.
This gap was central to a session on Human Rights Impact Assessments (HRIAs) of Digital Technologies at the Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa 2026 (FIFAfrica26). The session, hosted by the Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR) and the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) brought together National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs), digital rights activists and civil society organisations. The conversation drew on the experiences of NHRIs from South Africa, Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Zambia and Morocco, who shared practices and methodologies for monitoring the human rights impacts of digitalisation and emerging technologies.
Participants emphasised that digital progress cannot be measured only by increased connectivity or more services being delivered online. It must also be judged by whether it protects human dignity, reduces inequalities and provides effective remedies for rights violations.
“Human rights monitoring must follow the rights, not just the device,” noted Eileen Carter of the South African Human Rights Commission. She urged participants to examine the systems of power, institutions and relationships through which technology operates.
The human rights impacts of technology are rarely felt equally. Gender, disability, age, language, location and socioeconomic circumstances can determine who benefits and who is excluded. Digital rights monitoring should therefore go beyond measuring adoption or access and examine how different groups experience a technology, including whether it reinforces or reduces existing inequalities.
Participants noted that the absence of complaints received by NHRIs does not necessarily mean a digital system is causing little harm. People unable to access a service, understand how their data is used or challenge an automated decision may never appear in the evidence informing an assessment. Opaque decision-making and unequal access to information can further hide harm. Effective monitoring must therefore ask not only who uses a technology, but also who is excluded, whose experiences remain undocumented and who can demand accountability.
Human rights impact assessments offer a structured way to address these challenges. Rather than treating human rights as a compliance checklist, an HRIA identifies and analyses a technology’s potential and actual effects on individuals and communities. Both positive and negative impacts are considered. It involves gathering evidence, assessing impacts, identifying measures to prevent or mitigate harm, providing for remedy, and monitoring implementation.
The process runs from planning and scoping through evidence collection, impact analysis, prevention, mitigation and remedy, and reporting, with affected groups consulted throughout. It should establish which rights are affected, who is affected, what evidence is available, the severity of the impact and what action is required. Crucially, an HRIA must investigate people’s actual experiences rather than simply test whether an organisation meets predetermined requirements. This allows affected communities to participate meaningfully throughout the process.
Assessments should begin early enough to influence how a technology is designed and deployed, rather than only after harm occurs. They must also evolve as technologies and their uses change. Because digital systems cross borders and involve many public and private actors, assessing a product or platform in isolation may overlook wider risks. Sector-wide impact assessments can reveal harms that arise from interactions between telecommunications infrastructure, government agencies, data processors and technology providers.
Assessing digital technologies is not straightforward, and three challenges stand out. Digital technologies operate across jurisdictions, making it difficult to define the scope of an assessment. Additionally, digital ecosystems involve governments, technology companies, intermediaries, users and affected communities, so assessors must distinguish between primary and secondary stakeholders. Meanwhile, technology changes quickly, raising questions about when an assessment should be undertaken and how often findings should be revisited. Traditional methodologies may therefore need to be adapted, and HRIAs of digital technologies should be iterative rather than one-off, with periodic reassessment as technologies, users and impacts evolve.
During the FIFAfrica session, a practical exercise on a hypothetical national digital identity system illustrated these risks. While such a system could reduce fraud and improve access to public services, registration requirements, biometric databases and authentication processes could also expose people to privacy violations, discrimination or exclusion. Refugees, rural communities, older people, persons with disabilities, informal workers and women lacking required documentation often face particular barriers.
Participants emphasised that assessing such a system requires more than reviewing technical safeguards. It demands scrutiny of the whole ecosystem around the system: registration requirements, biometric databases, authentication systems, government agencies, private technology providers and mechanisms for challenging incorrect decisions. Governments introducing digital identity systems should therefore provide accessible alternatives, effective grievance and remedy mechanisms, robust data protection safeguards, and specific measures for groups likely to face exclusion.
The discussions also examined what happens after an assessment is completed. Participants noted that evidence has limited value unless it reaches institutions able to act on it. HRIA findings can inform legislation, regulation, NHRI recommendations, complaints mechanisms, public procurement, corporate engagement, investigations, litigation and advocacy. Every assessment should identify who is responsible for responding, what action is required and how implementation will be monitored.
NHRIs were singled out as well positioned to connect evidence with accountability. Their independence, formal mandates, and access to policymakers can strengthen human rights oversight. However, many face resource constraints and are still building the expertise needed to monitor rapidly evolving digital environments.
Participants called for stronger collaboration among NHRIs, civil society, researchers, regulators and affected communities. NHRIs bring institutional authority and oversight, while civil society contributes specialist knowledge, community relationships and evidence of harms that formal complaint mechanisms may miss. Universities and research institutions can strengthen the evidence base, while regulators can support enforcement within their mandates.
Sharing research, methodologies and findings would reduce duplication and help institutions make better use of limited resources. It was stressed that African organisations should build on existing evidence and data, rather than work in silos.
Participants also called for extending cooperation across borders – noting that digital services, data flows and corporate operations frequently span jurisdictions, while individual African countries may struggle to influence large technology companies on their own. Other recommendations included sharing court decisions, policy recommendations and evidence of cross-border violations to strengthen collective advocacy. Regional mechanisms, including African Union structures, were identified as additional avenues for coordinated action and follow-up on human rights commitments.
The meeting noted that international developments, including the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act, the Digital Services Act (DSA) and approaches to corporate human rights due diligence, offer useful reference points. However, African countries should not simply transplant external models. Assessment methodologies must reflect local laws, languages, socioeconomic realities and institutional capacities.
They should also address risks arising from Africa’s digital infrastructure, including the concentration of personal data in institutions that may simultaneously provide public services and exercise surveillance powers. Experiences from South Africa, Ghana, Kenya and Ethiopia show that national approaches to AI, cybersecurity, human rights and business already differ, underscoring the value of locally grounded approaches that selectively draw on international good practice.
Africa’s digital future will depend not only on technological investment but also on the strength of its accountability mechanisms. HRIAs can make the consequences of digitalisation visible, amplify the voices of affected communities and translate evidence into institutional and policy action. However, their effectiveness depends on institutional capacity, meaningful responses from governments and companies, and follow-up on recommendations.