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13Jun

2018 Edition of the Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa (FIFAfrica) Set To Take Place In Ghana

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Announcement |
The Collaboration for International ICT Policy in East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) is pleased to announce the fifth edition of the Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa (FIFAfrica). This year, the Forum will be hosted in partnership with the Media Foundation West Africa (MFWA) and will take place on September 26–28, 2018 in Accra, Ghana.
The Forum is a landmark event that convenes various stakeholders from the internet governance and online rights arenas in Africa and beyond to deliberate on gaps, concerns and opportunities for advancing privacy, access to information, free expression, non-discrimination and the free flow of information online on the continent.
Since inception, FIFAfrica has also served as a platform to mark the International Day for Universal Access to Information (IDUAI). Engagements at the Forum aim to reflect current trends and concerns in access and usage of the internet and related technologies on the continent. As such, each year has seen us launch themed research on the State of Internet Freedom in Africa. Last year, we also launched a key report on Calculating the Economic Cost of Internet Disruptions in Sub-Saharan Africa.
While the 2014, 2015 and 2016 editions of FIFAfrica were hosted in Uganda, in 2017, the Forum was hosted in Johannesburg, South Africa in partnership with the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), an international network and non-profit organisation that works towards a free and open internet.
Indeed, spreading the physical footprint of FIFAfrica across different regions of the continent ensures that the Forum lives up to its goal of unpacking internet freedom challenges and opportunities in sub-regions of Africa and developing responses that are collaborative, and informed by insights from the experience of other sub-regions of the continent. Hosting the Forum in in west Africa for the first time will not only open up the space to more west African civil society, private sector and public sector actors to contribute their experiences to the regional discussion, but will  also give life to the Forum’s commitment of ensuring broader regional representation and deepening conversations across the continent.
At a practical level, skills development among participants is prioritized. Previous Forums have seen our partners AccessNow and DefendDefenders host digital security clinics. In 2017, The Localisation Lab hosted a localization sprint aimed at advancing the adoption of internet freedom tools in East and Southern Africa through translation of technologies and creation of key resources to support the education, training, and adaptation of digital security and circumvention tools in the region. This included the translation of tools into languages like Shona, Luganda, and Ndebele.
Other skills development events at the Forum have in the past included a workshop on Strategic Digital Rights Litigation hosted in partnership with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and the Media Legal Defence Initiative (MLDI) and a workshop on human rights review mechanisms, which took participants through African and United Nations (UN) Universal Periodic Reviews processes which was hosted by APC, CIPESA and Small Media.
With strategic linkages to other internet freedom forums and support for the development of substantive inputs to inform the conversations on human rights online happening at national level, at the African Union and the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR), the African Internet Governance Forum (IGF), subregional IGFs, the global IGF, Stockholm Internet Forum (SIF), the Internet Freedom Festival (IFF), the Internet Freedom Forum (Nigeria) and RightsCon, among others, FIFAfrica provides a pan-African space where discussion from these other events can be consolidated at continent-wide level, drawing a large multi-stakeholder audience of actors.

See the evolution of the Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa (FIFAfrica)

Share your thoughts on your vision for Internet Freedom in Africa using #InternetFreedomAfrica  This year, the event hashtag is #FIFAfrica18
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07Jun

CIPESA Joins The Global Network Initiative

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Announcement | The Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) is the newest member of the civil society constituency of the Global Network Initiative.
CIPESA works to inform policymakers and other stakeholders across the African continent about the connection between rights-based ICT policies and good governance and improved livelihoods. GNI will benefit from CIPESA’s policy and legal expertise to advance Internet freedom and privacy in Africa, and from its convening power as coordinator of the regional ICT4Democracy in East Africa Network and hosts of the Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa (FIFAfrica).
Through engagement with GNI companies and experts, CIPESA hopes GNI membership will allow them to widen their network, and enhance their multi-stakeholder approach at the global level. CIPESA’s Executive Director Dr. Wairagala Wakabi said: “Our membership will enable us to gain more skills and knowledge from a multiplicity of important actors, to continue playing the role of multipliers and advocates who are able to reach wide audiences and to influence the perceptions and actions of relevant African actors on digital rights.”
Some highlights of CIPESA’s work include an intensive regional training on ICT policy research for different stakeholders, annual reporting on the trends affecting Internet  freedom across Africa, and analyses or commentary on corporate transparency and laws and policies on the ground in a number of countries, including Burundi, Rwanda, South Africa, and Tanzania. You can learn more about their work, which has received wide coverage. 
CIPESA’s membership marks a period of notable expansion for GNI’s civil society constituency in the Global South. For more information about CIPESA, visit: CIPESA.org. To learn more about GNI’s multi-stakeholder membership see here.

07Jun

Uganda: New social media tax will push basic connectivity further out of reach for millions

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By Alliance For Affordable Internet |
Uganda’s government has passed a new tax that will require citizens to pay UGX 200 (US$0.05) per day in order to use messaging and voice over-the-top services (OTTs), including Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Viber. The tax, slated to take effect on 1 July, will push the cost of basic internet access further out of reach for millions of low-income Ugandans. The government must take urgent action to reverse this measure.
The Excise Duty (Amendment) Bill 2018, passed last week by the Ugandan Parliament, calls for telecommunications service operators providing data used to access OTTs to pay an excise duty on this access. According to Reuters, the country’s mobile network operators are likely to pass these costs on to consumers, levying a daily tax on each SIM card used to access the relevant platforms and services. The impact on consumers in Uganda — and particularly on low-income users — will be significant, and is likely to force many of these users to curb their internet usage, or to forego access entirely.
Only five other countries in Africa (where data was available) have more expensive mobile internet plans than Uganda. At the end of 2016, a 1GB mobile broadband plan in Uganda cost more than 15% of average monthly income. This high cost is keeping Ugandans offline — according to the GSMA, individual mobile internet subscriber rates in Uganda stand at just 18% of the population.
The true cost to connect is even higher for those earning less than the average national income (i.e., less than US$630/year). For the lowest income group in Uganda (see graph below), purchasing the same 1GB plan costs them 30% of their average monthly income. With the excise duty in place, this cost to connect for Uganda’s poorest will jump by 10%, resulting in just 1GB of data costing them nearly 40% of their average monthly income. The richest Ugandans will also experience an increase of 1% in their cost to connect, and by and large, this new excise duty disproportionately and negatively impacts low-income Ugandans and their ability to affordably access the internet.

he Ugandan government has argued that such a tax is necessary both to reduce gossip (“lugambo”) on these platforms, and to raise funds needed to address the impacts of comments made on social media that are critical of the government. However, it has not provided any explanation as to how such a tax might change what people say on the platforms, nor how the funds collected would be used to address these impacts.
The government has also argued that this tax will help promote local content development by placing a tax on “imported content.”  As consumers increasingly shift toward data-based services, mobile operators will have new opportunities to develop and offer their own OTT services on their networks. However, the current language in the bill makes the duty applicable to all voice and messaging OTTs, including those that could potentially be developed by mobile operators or Ugandan firms. This is precisely why regulators in other countries have opted not to intervene on OTTs — so that local companies can innovate and create jobs and value in the telecoms market. The government of Nigeria, for example, previously considered a tax on internet use, which was eventually scrapped as a result of studies showing it would make access unaffordable for millions of people.
For other local firms that rely on voice and messaging apps for sales and service, for example when they use WhatsApp to communicate with customers, this duty will hurt their businesses. Finally, from a consumer view, these services offer value for money to communicate and share with others beyond what existing voice and messaging services can provide.
Stifling internet uptake and use is also likely to result in failure to achieve the goals laid out in the Digital Uganda Vision.The ICT sector contributed 3.4% to Uganda’s GDP in 2015, and increasing internet access has the potential to spur significant socio-economic growth — a recent study showed that a 10% increase in mobile broadband penetration can increase economic growth by nearly 3%.
We urge the government of Uganda to:

  • Repeal the excise duty amendment before it goes into effect, and
  • Adopt an evidence-based approach to policy making for the sector, with a specific focus on better broadband planning, increased public access solutions, innovative spectrum policy, and more efficient use of universal service and access funds.

By focusing instead on these areas, the government can have a far more positive impact on increasing internet access, and promoting local content development and innovation.
Featured image: Bustling street scene in Kabale, Uganda (Photo credit: Adam Cohn, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

07Jun

Tanzanian Court Acquits Jamii Forums Founders on One of Three Charges

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By Ashnah Kalemera |
A Tanzanian court has acquitted the founders of popular online discussion platform Jamii Forums, who were charged over failure to comply with a police order to disclose the identity of two users of their platform.
The magistrate’s court at Kisitu in the capital Dar es Salaam found that Maxence Melo and Micke William had no case to answer in the case, in which the two were alleged to have obstructed investigations in contravention of Section 22(2) of the Cyber Crimes Act, 2015 by refusing to comply with an order to disclose their platform users’ data. The ruling cuts the number of cases against Melo and William to two.
Reacting to the June 1, 2018 decision, Melo stated that it was a “victory for anyone who would like to see freedom of expression flourish” in Tanzania. He said he was glad to have only two outstanding cases, having recently endured four court appearances over five days.
In December 2016, Melo was charged with three offences: two counts of not complying with a disclosure order under Section 22(2) of the Cyber Crimes Act (2015) and one count of managing a domain that is not registered in Tanzania under Section 79(c) of the Electronic and Postal Communications Act (2010). Melo was initially charged alone but William was subsequently added to the cases as a co-accused, since he is a shareholder in Jamii Media, the legal entity under which Jamii Forums is run.
Section 22(2) of the Cyber Crimes Act relates to unlawful interference with investigations and refusal to comply with an order under the Act. The penalty, upon conviction, is a fine of three million Tanzania Shillings (USD 1,300) or imprisonment for one year, or both. Meanwhile, Section 79 of the Electronic and Postal Communications Act (2010) provides for the regulation of all electronic communication numbering and electronic addresses by the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA). Part C of the section mandates the authority to perform oversight role of management of .tz – the country’s code Top Level Domain (ccTLD).
The charges stemmed from Jamii Forum’s refusal to comply with police disclosure notices to reveal the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, email and phone numbers of users, whose identities authorities sought after whistleblowing corruption scandals in the oil and banking sectors.
Initially, Jamii Media, went to court challenging the disclosure orders and specifically provisions of Section 32 and 38 of the Cybercrime Act. However, the petition was dismissed in a ruling that dealt a blow to intermediary liability rules in Tanzania.
During court proceedings in the now dismissed case, prosecutors called four witnesses including two officials from the Tanzania Police cybercrime department. Court also heard testimony from the Human Resource Manager of CUSNA Investment LTD, the company which made a defamatory report to police regarding the information disclosed by the whistleblowers. The fourth witness called by the prosecutor was the Acting Deputy Registrar of Intellectual Property at Tanzania Business Registrations and Licensing. Proceedings then stalled with the prosecution indicating that it had no further witnesses to call.
Since its enactment in 2015, state authorities in Tanzania have used the Cyber Crimes Act to arrest and prosecute individuals for expressing critical opinion. Reportedly passed in the middle of the night, the Act is one of many recent laws in Tanzania that have been criticised for disregarding free speech and access to information, among other citizens’ constitutionally guaranteed rights.
Hearings in the remaining two cases against Melo and William are scheduled to continue during June.

06Jun

Uncertainty Over How Uganda’s New Social Media Tax Will be Collected

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By Juliet Nanfuka |
On May 30, 2018, Uganda’s parliament passed the Excise Duty (Amendment) Bill 2018, which will see users of Over-The-Top (OTT) services that include messaging and voice calls via Whatsapp, Facebook, Skype and Viber pay a mandatory fee of UGX 200 (USD 0.05) per day of use. In another move that could hit affordability, stifle innovation, and undermine the role digital technologies play in socio-economic transformation, the amendment will also introduce a one percent fee on each mobile money transaction. However, it remains unclear how the tax on social media use would be collected.
The amendment bill was first introduced last April and was met with criticism over the new taxes, which many observers believe would make Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) inaccessible to majority of Ugandans. The taxes were proposed in response to a letter president Yoweri Museveni wrote to the finance ministry wherein he stated that the government needed resources “to cope with the consequences” of social media users’ “opinions, prejudices [and] insults”. Without mentioning mobile money, Museveni proposed a levy of UGX 100 (USD 0.025) per day per OTT user, but proposals by the finance ministry, since passed by parliament, doubled this figure.
Further, days after parliament passed the amendments bill, the finance minister reportedly stated that the tax rate on mobile money transactions should be 0.5% and not 1% and suggested that the bill could need revisiting.


As of September 2017, Uganda had an internet penetration rate of 48%. Meanwhile, there were 23 million mobile money subscribers in a country of 37.7 million people, and their more than 340 million transactions during the third quarter of 2017 alone totalled UGX 18.1 trillion (USD 4.7 billion).
Mobile money has been a primary avenue of financial inclusion particularly for the unbanked. According to the Bank of Uganda, in 2015, only 16% of the population had a bank point of service within one kilometre of a home, whereas 54% of the population had a mobile money point of service within one kilometre.
Meanwhile, social media has served as many users’ initial entry point to internet use in many developing countries such as Uganda. This is among the reasons why OTT packages have been popular with telecommunications companies as tools to attract more clients. Introducing taxes on the use of these platforms could therefore negatively impact local content development and civic participation tools that rely on these services.
The proposals passed by Uganda’s parliament also include raising tax on airtime on cellular, landline and public payphones from 5% to 12% and the increase on the tax on mobile money transfers from 10% to 15%. .
The passing of the bill attracted various reactions on Twitter:


In 2016, social media and mobile money services were shut down twice during the electioneering period.


As a result of the shutdown of social media platforms, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) became popular as users sought alternative avenues to remain online. There were no alternatives for mobile money users but the impact of the shutdown was felt by mobile money service providers such as the Airtel Uganda mobile money platform which at the time was  used by around 650,000 unique users per day and processed around 30 billion Ugandan shillings (USD 8.8 million) according to FSD Uganda.
At a private sector dialogue hosted by the Collaboration on International ICT Policy in East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) a day after the passing of the bill, participants noted that the move to tax mobile money services could potentially force users to explore other alternatives for transactions, including reverting to cash or to new financial transaction models such as blockchain which is emerging as a  potential alternative avenue for financial transactions in Uganda.


According to a 2017/18 Uganda National Information Technology Survey, social media platforms including OTT services are some of the popular avenues through which civic engagement has been pursued by the state. It remains to be seen how access to government services will be incorporated in the new tax model.


With the taxation expected to come into effect as early as July 1, 2018, uncertainty remains over whether, if signed into law by the president, the tax would be executed given the limited public consultation and the absence of guidelines.

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