Promoting Effective and Inclusive ICT Policy in Africa

Tag Archives: Digital Rights

  HomeCollaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA)  /  Digital Rights
30Apr

Call For Applications: Africa Digital Rights Fund

Author admin Posted on

Call for Applications |
With a quarter of Africa’s population using the internet and with 76 mobile phone connection for every 100 individuals, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has become pivotal to improving livelihoods and promoting human rights on the continent. However, with rising digital rights violations such as arrests and intimidation of internet users, network shutdowns, and a proliferation of laws and regulations that hamper internet access and affordability, the potential of digital technologies to catalyse free expression and civic participation or to drive innovation is under threat in Africa. Yet many organisations working to defend and promote digital rights face limitations of reach, skills, resources, and consistency in engagement in this area.
To address this, the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) has established the Africa Digital Rights Fund (ADRF) to offer flexible and rapid response grants to select initiatives in Africa to implement activities that advance digital rights, including advocacy, litigation, research, policy analysis, digital literacy and digital security skills building.
Assessments have found that whereas digital rights advocacy in the region has a large pool of interest, ”it is very shallow, spread very thinly and difficult to sustain”. The policy and practice developments in the region, coupled with the challenges faced by civil society organisations, necessitate partnerships that bring together various competences for advancing digital rights. The ADRF has been developed to strengthen local capacity in evidence-based research, collaborative advocacy and impactful policy engagements responsive to regulatory and practice developments that affect internet freedom in the region.  
The ADRF grant amounts will range between US$ 1,000 and US$ 10,000 based on the  need and scope of the proposed intervention. The grant period will not exceed six months with an average of 15 grants to be awarded per year.
The Fund will benefit small organisations, including those that do not qualify for support from most funders for lack of registration and institutional capacity to develop applications and manage big projects. It  will also benefit organisations and initiatives that need rapid response support to respond swiftly to emerging issues that can not wait for many funders’ lengthy application procedures.
Applications are now open  for the period July-December 2019. The deadline for submissions is Friday May 31, 2019. Read more about the Fund and the eligibility criteria here.  The application form can be accessed here.

11Apr

Senegal Fails to Prioritise Human Rights Online

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By Ashnah Kalemera |
Senegal’s diverse media landscape helps it to attain relatively high scores in international press freedom rankings. It is ranked 50 out of 180 countries in the 2018 World Press Freedom Index, up from 79 in 2015. The country’s Constitution guarantees the right to freedom of expression thus: “Everyone shall have the right to freely express and disseminate his opinions by word, written word or image or peaceful march, provided that the exercise of these rights shall not undermine the honour of and respect due to other persons, nor threaten public order.”
However, freedom of expression online is restricted under various legislation including the Penal Code, 1965, Law No. 14/2017 on the Press Code and Law No. 2011-01 which governs the telecommunications sector. In 2018, the Senegalese government moved to tighten its grip on online communication after parliament passed a law regulating the internet, a move justified as necessary to stem the spread of misinformation. These laws have facilitated the arrest and prosecution of critical journalists and artists, including for content published online.
Meanwhile, although the country has had a privacy and data protection law for over a decade, the enforcement authority – the Commission of Personal Data (CDP) – has not been able to sufficiently fulfill its mandate due to resource limitations. Nonetheless, several private and public actors continue to collect personal data in Senegal without any regulatory enforcement by the CDP. This is the case for mandatory SIM card registration implemented by the Regulatory Authority for Telecommunications and Posts (ARTP) through mobile telecom operators and linked to the national identity database.
Article 5 of the Press Code provides that journalists and the media have “free access” to information but there are exemptions such as where the information is a “defense secret” or relates to “secret investigations” or regulations applicable to access to some sites or structures. However, Senegal remains without an access to information law to facilitate citizens’ requests for information and proactive disclosures, and there are widespread calls for a law to be passed in order to promote transparency and accountability.
Meanwhile, low affordability and poor quality of service further hinder adoption of technology in an otherwise thriving sector. Mobile telephony, for example, now offers solutions for virtual financial services ranging from banking services to payment services. Further, leading money transfer application WARI, which was founded in Senegal and remains hugely popular, has been adopted in many countries in West Africa. In the agriculture sector, MLouma, which connects sellers and buyers of agricultural products, has grown from 1,000 to 75,000 users since developing a version which allows users without smartphones or the internet to access the service, as well as integrating a payment service.
As a United Nations (UN) member state, Senegal underwent her third cycle human rights assessment under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) mechanism during the 31st session of the Human Rights Council in November 2018. Digital rights did not feature explicitly in the 257 recommendations made regarding human rights protection at legal and institutional level. However, up to seven recommendations made by France, Chile, Sweden, Peru and Greece related to media rights and free speech. These recommendations echoed those in previous reviews  that remained largely unimplemented.
As part of Internet Freedom and UPR advocacy efforts at the Human Rights Council, the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA), Small Media, Jonction Senegal and the Senegal ICT Users Association (ASUTIC) made the following recommendations to UN members to consider putting forward to the Senegal delegation:

Key Issue/s Recommendations
Freedom of Expression
  • Amend Article 28 of the draft Electronic Communications Code to ensure judicial oversight over the regulator’s powers to impose any traffic management measures.
  • Reform press legislation, eliminating tough penalties for press offenses.
  • Uphold citizens’ rights to freedom of expression by discontinuing the practice of arrest and intimidation of critical journalists and artists.
Freedom of information and censorship of content
  • Provisions of the press code infringing freedom of information, notably Article 5, should be amended to provide clear definitions of information exempt from access by journalists. Meanwhile, Article 192 should be repealed.
  • Draft an access to information law in compliance with international human rights standards. The law should be drafted through participatory/consultative processes.
  • Reform the entire legal framework that restricts journalists’ freedom to inform or which promotes censorship, in particular articles 254 (Offense to the Head of State), 255 (False News),  and 258 (Defamation) of the Penal Code.
Equality and barriers to access
  • Take concrete and effective measures to lower barriers to access including extending rural infrastructure and promote a competitive industry to ensure easy and affordable internet access for underserved communities.
  • Enforce licensing obligations on telecommunications operators in order to improve the quality of service offered.
Right to data protection and privacy on the Internet
  • Take concrete measures for the effective implementation of Law No. 2008-12 of 25 January 2008 to ensure the protection of personal data.
  • Allocate sufficient resources (financial, logistical, and personnel) to the Personal Data Commission (CDP) to support fulfilment of its mandate
Freedom of creation and innovation
  • Prioritise funding and subsidies for digital literacy and innovation programmes

See the full advocacy brief here. French version is also available here.  
On March 14, 2019, Senegal accepted 229 out of the 257 recommendations it received in the  UPR assessment. A full list of the accepted and rejected recommendations is not yet available so it remains unclear whether recommendations accepted prioritise reforms to fully guarantee citizens’ rights – online and offline – to freedom of expression, access to information, and to privacy.
 

07Mar

Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum

The Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum (DRIF) is an arena where tough topical global issues around Internet rights, especially in Africa, are discussed between civil society, technology companies, government, academia and other stakeholders. For the first time ever, the Forum will focus considerable time and energy on digital inclusion, after organising six editions that focused heavily on digital rights.
For more information on the event, click here.

26Jul

Dialogue on Social Media and Mobile Money Taxation in Uganda

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CIPESATalks |
The evolution of the digital economy in Uganda over the last 20 years has broken barriers associated to geography and time and thus enabled information flows critical for business processes, innovation, entrepreneurship, civic participation, learning and research, and government service delivery.
Following concerns on the growing public debt bill, and a constrained tax base, the Uganda government introduced a raft of taxes in the Excise Duty Act (Amended), notably on Over the Top (OTT) services and mobile money transactions. Beginning July 1, 2018, users must pay a tax of UGX 200 (USD 0.05) per day to access various social media platforms including Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and LinkedIn. For mobile money, a 1% levy applies to deposits and withdrawals, on top of a revised excise duty of 15% up from 10% on transfers. These taxes pose a huge threat on internet access and affordability, and financial inclusion for low income and marginalized groups such as women, youth and rural communities. In fact, the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) estimatesthat the social media tax will cost Uganda’s poorest up to 40% of their average monthly income to buy a basket of 1GB of data.
Accordingly, CIPESA in partnership with the Internet Society Uganda Chapter seeks to convene stakeholders to deliberate on the economic, social and human rights impact arising from the new taxes. The dialogue will deliberate on how policy making processes can advance inclusive and equitable access to the internet, promote innovation and consumer rights protection. The dialogue builds on previous ones convened by CIPESA, for multiple stakeholders in the ICT eco-system.
See full agenda here.

24Mar

Building Collaborations in Research for Internet Policy Advocacy in Africa

Author admin Posted on

By Juliet Nanfuka |

Many African countries are caught between developing policies that support the unfettered use of the internet as a tool for social, economic and political growth, and laws that threaten citizens’ rights and use of digital technologies. Often, this is partly due to limited evidence upon which to base policies and decision-making, which results from the scant availability of relevant in-depth research.

As the need for internet policy advocacy that is informed by research grows, it is essential to increase the amount and depth of research originating from Africa. It is equally necessary to expand the methods used beyond the traditional to more contemporary ones such as network measurements, social network analysis and data mining. This has led to the need to train, connect, and build collaboration between researchers, policy makers and internet freedom advocates across the region and formed the basis of an intensive training on internet policy research methods.

The training workshop, which was held between February 27 and March 3, 2018, was organised by the Annenberg School for Communication’s Internet Policy Observatory and the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA), alongside several partners from across Africa. A total of 40 participants from 17 countries attended the training in Kampala, Uganda. They included journalists, lawyers, technologists, academics, telecom regulators, government officials, and digital rights advocates.

 

The six days’  intensive curriculum covering various topics including on policy research, legal analysis, survey methods, social network analysis, strategic communication, data visualization, and network measurement was led by experts in the field, including faculty from Makerere University, University of San Francisco, the University of Pennsylvania, as well as various think tanks and civil society organisations.

The workshop emphasised the need to embrace more collaborative push back efforts such as strategic litigation, the deployment of tools such as the Ooni probe that monitor internet speed and performance, accompanied by social network analysis, data visualisation and data scraping which can reflect patterns of online narrative. It was also stressed that these methodologies, coupled with traditional research approaches through physical interactions such as focus group discussions and key informant interviews would support more multidisciplinary collaborations and versatile communication strategy for internet policy advocacy in Africa.

Indeed, evidence-based advocacy is fundamental today perhaps more than ever, as the affronts to citizen’s rights online continuously evolve, including at a technological infrastructure level (internet throttling, internet shutdowns, surveillance and data breaches), as well as laws and regulations that increasingly criminalise internet use. More recently, financial affronts to online content production and dissemination have been witnessed in Tanzania and Uganda.

The workshop alumni join a cohort of others from the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America equipped with the skills needed to collaborate across disciplinary and professional silos for progressive internet policy and practice at national, regional and global levels.

Below are some tweets shared  from the workshop:


https://twitter.com/kudathove/status/969500199486984192


https://twitter.com/kudathove/status/969125256911781889


https://twitter.com/NHLAKANHLANHLA/status/968457060424781824


https://twitter.com/kudathove/status/968095031763652610
 


 

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