Blog – Page 5 of 189 – Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA)

09Oct

Validation Workshop for The Recommendations Made to Lesotho’s Draft Data Management Policy 2025

CIPESA October 9, 2025November 10, 2025

Event Update |

This is a follow-up workshop to the July 28 – 30 Data Governance Workshop, where we conducted a survey and capacity building sessions with the selected participants (folks from the Ministry of Information, Communications, Science, Technology & Innovation, CSOs, Academia, Private sector, and the media).

During the July session, which was primarily a stakeholder engagement on Lesotho’s Draft Data Management Policy and domesticating the African Union Data Policy Framework (AUDPF 2022), the following topics were covered: situating the African Data Governance framework, analysing the Kingdom of Lesotho’s Data Management Policy & Data Protection Act 2011, and gathering stakeholder opinions on the alignment of the legislative framework.

On October 13-14, 2025, validate recommendations for a consensus-driven DMP for Lesotho and a Data Management Policy aligned with continental best practices in data governance.

07Oct

Digital Rights Booth at The UMA Show Grounds

CIPESA October 7, 2025November 10, 2025

Event Update |

The Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) will host a Digital Rights Booth under the ENABEL-Business & Human Rights project at the Uganda Manufacturers Association (UMA) Showgrounds from October 8th to 9th, 2025. The booth will showcase CIPESA’s efforts in promoting digital inclusion, online safety, and data governance, and will feature the Digital Rights Toolkit for Businesses, a practical resource designed to help enterprises integrate human rights principles into their digital operations. Visitors will have the opportunity to explore the toolkit, engage in interactive discussions, and learn how responsible digital practices can foster innovation, trust, and compliance.

06Oct

Digital Rights Booth at The UMA Show Grounds

CIPESA October 6, 2025November 10, 2025

Event Update |

06Oct

The G20 Should Challenge the Power Dynamics in Digital Public Infrastructure

CIPESA October 6, 2025October 29, 2025

Juliet Nanfuka |

Data plays a crucial role in T20 discussions at the G20, influencing online interaction and civic engagement. The G20 should use its influence to create a multi-stakeholder agenda for Digital Public Infrastructure design.

Data is at the heart of T20 discussions around the G20, as it informs the architecture of online interaction, civic participation (and exclusion) and the governance of digital society. As such, it is also central to digital public infrastructure (DPI), serving as a foundational requirement and an enabler of new data generation and data mobility. Data drives the three key pillars of DPI – digital identification, digital payments and data exchange – in addition to other emerging features such as geospatial data and data aggregation. However, the expanding role of DPI raises questions about its alignment with constitutional guarantees, data protection frameworks and the lived realities of end users across Africa.

In 2023, India’s G20 presidency laid the foundation for discourse on DPI with great precision. A year later, the 2024 G20 Rio de Janeiro Leaders’ Declaration acknowledged ‘the contribution of digital public infrastructure to an equitable digital transformation’. It went on to note ‘the transformative power of digital technologies to bridge existing divides and empower societies and individuals including all women and girls and people in vulnerable situations.

Consequently, DPI has been positioned as a necessary tool for international trade facilitation and industrialisation in developing countries. In Africa, this momentum has been supported by strategies such as the AU’s Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa (2020–2030), the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and the 2024 adoption of the Continental AI Strategy. Various countries across the continent have integrated DPI into their national strategies.

The pace of DPI integration is mirrored by growing financial investment in DPI. Examples include the $200 million Ghana Digital Acceleration Project by the World Bank in 2022 to expand broadband access and strengthen digital innovation ecosystems. In June 2025, the AfCFTA Adjustment Fund Credit Facility funded $10 million to support private sector adaptation to AfCFTA frameworks, with initial commitments to Telecel Global Services to enhance connectivity and regional integration. The company provides wholesale voice and SMS services and enterprise connectivity solutions to more than 250 telecom operators across Africa and globally.

While the expansion of DPI is often framed as a progressive step, it also carries significant governance trade-offs. The expansion of DPI in countries with weak democratic safeguards heightens the risk of state overreach, mass surveillance and reduced civic freedoms, making it essential to set clear limits on state access to citizens’ data to safeguard participation and accountability. Further, concerns over data sovereignty also loom.

Other T20 commentaries have stressed the urgent need for multi-stakeholder engagement to align DPI with the realities of developing countries. Without this alignment, DPI could increase existing regulatory gaps that compromise civic rights and consumer protection, fraud prevention and privacy. Meanwhile, the current wave of DPI design could exclude smaller economies that lack the capacity to engage in complex cross-border arrangements, such as those established between India’s Unified Payments Interface and Singapore’s PayNow. However, efforts such as the East African Community’s Cross-Border Payment System Masterplan aimed at inclusive, secure, efficient and interoperable cross-border payments in the region are underway.

If DPI is deployed without further interrogation, especially within the contexts of lower-income and developing countries that are often still navigating authoritarian systems, there is a risk of introducing yet another form or layer of digital exclusion from the global ecosystem. This could amplify existing national exclusions emerging from lack of access to the basics promised by DPI, such as national identity documents as keys to financial inclusion or access to basic services and civic rights.

When governments replace human interaction with automated systems, they risk ignoring the real-life experiences and needs of people who use – or could use – DPI. Thus, while DPI is being positioned as a solution to the challenges many developing countries are facing, it is important to keep in mind that infrastructure is not neutral. Its built-in biases, risks and design choices will ultimately impact citizens. Thus, for the real impact of DPI to be realised, it is necessary for the G20 to address concerns on:

The power affordances embedded in DPI design. The architecture of DPI prioritises the interests of those who design and fund it. The G20 should require that DPI initiatives undergo power mapping to identify who holds decision-making authority, how data flows are controlled and which actors stand to benefit or be marginalised by the design and deployment of DPI.
The institutionalisation of regulatory sandboxing. Regulatory sandboxes offer a controlled, transparent environment where DPI tools and policies can be tested for fairness, legality, inclusivity and public interest alignment before full-scale implementation. The G20 should promote the use of regulatory sandboxes as a mechanism to scrutinise DPI systems and their governance frameworks.
Strengthen multi-stakeholder inclusion. DPI needs to be built with the participation of more stakeholders – including civil society, private sector actors, academia and marginalised communities – in decision-making. The G20 should use its convening power to set the multi-stakeholder agenda in the design of DPI interventions.
Safeguard data sovereignty. African countries developing data governance frameworks need to balance sovereignty with interoperability, and prevent a dependency on foreign-controlled systems.
Enhance public awareness interventions. Despite significant DPI developments, many citizens remain unaware of their implications. The media plays a critical role in bridging this gap. There should be more integration with media partners in furthering public awareness of DPI, its functions and consequences. The G20 should not negate the role of the media in driving public awareness on DPI interventions.

This commentary was first published on the T20 website on October 06, 2025.

29Sep

State of Internet Freedom In Africa Report

CIPESA September 29, 2025October 3, 2025

2025 State of Internet Freedom In Africa Report Documents the Implications of AI on Digital Democracy in Africa

By Juliet Nanfuka |

The 2025 edition of the Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa (FIFAfrica25) concluded on a high note with the unveiling of the latest State of Internet Freedom in Africa (SIFA) report. Titled Navigating the Implications of AI on Digital Democracy in Africa, this landmark study unpacks how artificial intelligence is shaping, disrupting, and reimagining civic space and digital rights across the continent.

Drawing on research from 14 countries (Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe), the report documents both the immense promise and the urgent perils of AI in Africa. It highlights AI’s potential to strengthen democratic participation, improve public services, and drive innovation, while also warning of its role in amplifying surveillance, disinformation, and exclusion.

Using a qualitative approach, including literature review and key informant interviews, the report shows that AI is rapidly transforming how Africans interact with technology, yet AI also amplifies existing vulnerabilities, introduces new challenges that undermine fundamental freedoms, and deepens existing inequalities.

The report notes that the political environment is a crucial determinant of AI’s trajectory, with strong democracies generally enabling a positive outcome. Top performers in freedom and governance indices such as South Africa, Ghana, Namibia, and Senegal are more likely to set the standard to AI rollout in Africa. Conversely, countries with lower democratic credentials such as Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Rwanda risk constraining AI’s potential or deploying it to amplify digital authoritarianism and political repression.

Countries such as South Africa, Tunisia and Egypt that have a higher internet access and technological development, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, and score highly on the Human Development Index (HDI), are more likely to lead in AI. Meanwhile, countries with lower or weaker levels of digital infrastructure face greater challenges and higher risks of AI replicating and worsening existing divides. Such countries include Cameroon, Mozambique and Uganda.

The political environment is a crucial determinant of AI’s trajectory, with strong democracies generally enabling a positive outcome. Economic and developmental status also dictates the capacity for AI development and adoption.

Despite these challenges, the report documents that AI offers substantial value to the public sector by improving service delivery and enhancing transparency. Governments are leveraging AI tools for efficiency, such as the South African Revenue Services (SARS) AI Assistant for tax assessments and Nigeria’s Service-Wise GPT for streamlined governance document access. In Kenya, the Sauti ya Bajeti (Voice of the Budget) platform fosters fiscal transparency by allowing citizens to query and track government expenditures. Furthermore, countries like Tunisia and Uganda are using AI models within tax bodies to detect fraud, while Rwanda is deploying AI for judicial system improvements and identity management at borders.

The private sector and academic institutions are driving AI-inspired innovation, particularly in the areas of FinTech, AgriTech, and Natural Language Processing (NLP). For the latter, notable efforts to localise AI include Tunisia’s TUNBERT model for Tunisian Arabic, and Ghana’s Khaya, an open-source AI-powered translator tailored for local languages. In Ghana, the DeafCanTalk, is an AI-powered app that enables bidirectional translation between sign language and spoken language, and has enhanced accessibility for deaf users. Rwanda has integrated AI into healthcare using drone delivery systems for medical supplies, while Cameroon and Uganda use AI to assist farmers with pest identification.

However, despite increasing investment, such as the ongoing USD 720 million investment in compute power by Cassava Technologies across hubs in South Africa, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, and Nigeria, Africa receives significantly lower AI funding than global counterparts.

Moreover, while AI is gaining traction across many sectors, the proliferation of AI-generated misinformation and disinformation is a pervasive and growing challenge that poses a critical threat to electoral integrity. During South Africa’s 2024 elections, deepfake videos were circulated to manipulate perceptions and endorse political entities. Similarly, during elections and protests in Kenya and Namibia, deepfake technology and automated campaigns were used to discredit opponents.

The report also documents that governments are deploying AI-powered surveillance technologies, which has led to widespread privacy violations and a chilling effect on freedoms. For example, pro-government propagandists in Rwanda utilised Large Language Models (LLMs) to mass-produce synthetic messages on social media, simulating authentic support and suppressing dissenting voices. Meanwhile, algorithmic bias and exclusion are producing discriminatory outcomes, particularly against low-resource African languages. Also, AI-based content moderation is often ineffective because it lacks contextual understanding and fails to capture local nuance.

A key finding in the report is that across the continent, the pace of AI development far outstrips regulatory readiness. None of the 14 study countries has AI-specific legislation. Instead, fragmented laws on data protection, cybercrime, and copyright are stretched to cover AI, but remain inadequate. Data protection authorities are under-resourced, under-staffed, and often lack the technical expertise required to audit or govern complex AI systems.

Although many national AI strategies are emerging, they prioritise economic growth while neglecting human rights and accountability. This is also fuelled by policy processes that are often opaque and dominated by state actors, with limited multistakeholder participation.

The report stresses that without deliberate, inclusive, and rights-centred governance, AI risks entrenching authoritarianism and exacerbating inequalities.

To avoid the current trajectory that AI is taking in Africa, in which AI risks entrenching authoritarianism and exacerbating inequalities, the report calls for a human-centred AI governance framework built on inclusivity, transparency, and context.

It also makes recommendations, including enacting comprehensive AI-specific legislation, instituting mandatory human rights impact assessments, establishing empowered AI and data governance institutions, and promoting rights-based advocacy. Others are building technical capacity across governments, civil society and media, and developing policies that prioritise equity and human dignity alongside innovation.

AI offers Africa the opportunity to foster innovation, strengthen democracy, and drive sustainable development. This edition of the State of Internet Freedom in Africa report provides an evidence-based roadmap to ensure that Africa’s digital future remains open, inclusive, and rights-respecting.Find the report here.

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