Across Africa, increasingly restrictive laws governing non-governmental organisations (NGOs) continue to threaten civic space and undermine fundamental freedoms. From burdensome registration requirements and excessive fees to restrictions on foreign funding, advocacy and political participation, these measures are limiting civil society’s ability to operate independently, mobilise communities and hold governments accountable.
The Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) recognises that a free and enabling civic space is fundamental to protecting digital rights and freedoms. Extensive research on digital civic space, internet freedom, freedom of expression, association and assembly, reveals the continued need to advocate for legal and policy environments that enable civil society organisations to organise, participate in governance processes and exercise their rights both online and offline. Thus, restrictions on NGO operations, funding, and advocacy directly undermine the ability of civil society to advance digital rights, engage in public policy processes, monitor government actions, and demand accountability.
Against this backdrop, the Pan-African Lawyers Union (PALU) is seeking an Advisory Opinion from the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights to clarify the compatibility of restrictive NGO laws with the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The request seeks guidance on the limits of legitimate state regulation, particularly concerning freedom of association, assembly, expression, non-discrimination and participation in public affairs. It also seeks clarification on the legality, necessity and proportionality of restrictions imposed on civil society organisations.
CIPESA joins ARTICLE 19 West Africa, the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, MENA Rights Group and the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) in supporting this initiative. The proposed Advisory Opinion presents an opportunity to establish continent-wide legal standards that protect civic space, strengthen accountability and safeguard the ability of civil society to operate freely and independently, including in advancing digital rights and democratic participation.
Uganda’s climate change situation came to the fore this month – a troubling knowledge and accountability gap.
Deputy speaker of Parliament Thomas Tayebwa told the plenary on October 20, 2026, that the committee on climate change had not presented a single report during the five-year term of the 11th parliament, despite receiving and utilising public funds.
For starters, parliamentary committees are expected to scrutinise government programmes, assess policy implementation and hold public institutions accountable. Now, at a time when climate-related misinformation and disinformation are gaining ground, the absence of parliamentary scrutiny risks weakening public trust, undermining policy implementation and leaving vulnerable communities further exposed.
The 39-member committee failed to adequately scrutinise the implementation of Uganda’s National Climate Change Policy, the National Climate Change Act, 2021, and the country’s climate finance commitments.
The National Climate Change Policy was inaugurated in 2018 and provides the framework for coordinating climate action, including adaptation, mitigation, public awareness and resilience in vulnerable sectors.
Meanwhile, the National Climate Change Act establishes responsibilities for coordinating climate action, monitoring greenhouse gas emissions, preparing climate plans, mobilising finance and reporting on progress.
Uganda has also developed climate finance instruments, including the National Climate Finance Strategy and the Green Taxonomy, intended to improve how climate finance is mobilised, tracked and reported, and to identify activities that qualify as environmentally sustainable.
These are not merely documents for government shelves. They should guide decisions on how Uganda prepares for floods, droughts, food insecurity and other climate-related risks. Parliamentary scrutiny is essential to establishing whether the commitments translate into tangible benefits for citizens.
Without committee reports, parliament has less evidence on which to base debate, question government priorities or demand corrective action. When the committee on climate change was inaugurated, its then chairperson, Lawrence Biyika Songa, promised decisive action.
“We assure Ugandans that this committee will, on their behalf, and without fear or favour, treat the matter of climate change as a national emergency and therefore, employ a strict code of operation that will ensure and enforce compliance with guidelines by all stakeholders and citizens,” Songa said.
However, beyond parliament, climate change is increasingly discussed through the lens of misinformation and disinformation, which can distort public understanding, erode trust in credible institutions and undermine support for evidence-based responses.
At the Climate Change and Information Integrity Masterclass organised by the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) and UNESCO during the Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa 2026 (#FIFAfrica26) in Mauritius, participants examined the growing reach and complexity of climate misinformation and disinformation in African digital spaces.
The discussions highlighted how misleading narratives can encourage harmful environmental practices, exhaust communities through repeated exposure to false claims, and undermine confidence in trusted sources of information.
These effects can deepen existing inequalities, particularly where people have limited access to reliable, timely and locally relevant climate information.
Climate misinformation takes several forms including through narratives that deny climate change exists or question the reliability of climate modelling without engaging with the available evidence.
Others use “whataboutism”, arguing that Uganda’s contribution to global emissions is too small anyway to justify action, while overlooking the country’s need to prepare for climate impacts and protect its natural resources.
Another tactic shifts responsibility to individuals and consumers, suggesting that personal lifestyle changes alone can solve a problem that also requires institutional action, public investment and effective regulation.
But like MTN Group president and chief executive Ralph Mupita said in the 2022 report, climate change still remains one of the most pressing challenges of the time and affects even the less concerned people or entities.
For example, the April 2022 devastating storms that struck South Africa and killed more than 400 people in the Eastern Cape also affected and disrupted connectivity at more than 500 MTN sites.
“We are proud of our progress [on climate], but there is still much complex and challenging work to do — within our own business and as an industry. No single company can do it alone, and we intend to use our influence, technology and reach to inspire and enable wider action to tackle the climate emergency — by our customers, our suppliers, our industry and beyond,” he said.
The company’s climate commitments to protecting the environment and achieving net-zero emissions by 2040 include working with its 208 suppliers to support the target and is transitioning some network sites to alternative energy sources. It also diverted over 817 tonnes of network waste from landfills for refurbishment and reuse at new sites in underserved areas.
Other narratives argue that society will accept only voluntary policies and that restrictive measures are inevitably doomed to fail. The ongoing controversy surrounding Uganda’s charcoal restrictions illustrates how climate and environmental policies can become contentious when communities are not adequately consulted or when affordable alternatives are unclear.
A further tactic is to redirect responsibility by insisting that someone else should act first. In Uganda, debates about budget allocations, industrial emissions and the responsibilities of wealthier countries have become opportunities to evade scrutiny of domestic action.
While the historical responsibility of industrialised countries for greenhouse gas emissions is a legitimate issue, it should not be used to dismiss Uganda’s own climate risks or the need for effective policies.
Doomism presents another challenge. It portrays climate impacts as irreversible and all mitigation efforts as futile, encouraging resignation rather than informed action. The so-called climate “doomers” claim humanity should just wait for its extinction because, according to them, nobody is capable of fighting nature, and that humanity is being punished for its past mistakes against the planet.
Such claims, which are gaining popularity among young social media users, can weaken public support for measures that still have the potential to reduce risks and strengthen resilience. And as UN scientists have repeatedly pointed out, according to the BBC, there must be “rapid, deep and immediate” cuts in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions within three years to stave off the worst impacts.
The media has a critical role in challenging these narratives, but journalists themselves face significant obstacles. Limited resources, insufficient specialist knowlede, limited factual information and data, as well as a lack of fact-checking capacity can make it difficult to investigate climate change-related claims and explain complex scientific findings accurately.
Climate change affects communities differently. A report about drought, flooding or changing rainfall patterns needs to reflect local realities and the experiences of the people directly affected. Generic information from foreign publications may provide useful context, but it cannot always substitute for local research, community voices and evidence relevant to Uganda.
Social media has further complicated the information environment. Influencers and online commentators can reach large audiences without necessarily having the scientific expertise or editorial safeguards needed to assess climate claims.
Misleading content can remain accessible long after it has been challenged, while the absence of clear reporting channels makes correction difficult.
Recent public debate over El Niño forecasts in Uganda illustrates the challenge. When social media commentators mock or question meteorological warnings, the issue is not whether public institutions should be scrutinised. They should. The question is whether criticism is grounded in evidence or whether it spreads claims that discourage people from taking credible warnings seriously.
Even when environmental policies pursue legitimate objectives, poor communication and uncertainty about alternatives can make them vulnerable to ridicule and public resistance. The concerns of households that depend on charcoal cannot simply be dismissed as ignorance. Effective policy must address affordability, access to alternative fuels, and the practical circumstances of vulnerable communities.
Yet at the same time, fear of disruption can become an excuse for delaying necessary action. The pursuit of a policy that satisfies every affected party before implementation may leave the government unable to respond to urgent environmental threats.
The challenge is to develop workable, evidence-based measures, communicate their purpose clearly and provide support to those likely to bear the greatest costs.
Climate misinformation can also aggravate tensions over land, forests and scarce resources. During the masterclass at FIFAfrica, participants discussed how climate-related hazards can compound displacement and protection risks.
In Terego district, a refugee-hosting area, MP Wilfred Erima Babanga recently raised concerns about forest clearing by refugees compared with local communities’ conservation efforts. Such claims require careful verification and context.
Without reliable evidence, attributing environmental degradation to refugees or another vulnerable group risks turning a complex problem involving land pressure, resource management and climate stress into a source of social hostility. Climate and conflict can overlap, with women, children and men facing displacement as internally displaced people, refugees or victims of trafficking.
Those most exposed to climate risks are often also the people most vulnerable to misleading information. They need accessible forecasts, credible early warnings and practical guidance that supports informed decisions about livelihoods, movement and access to resources.
Public institutions should provide timely, transparent and accessible information. Journalists need training, resources and reliable sources. Civil society organisations and technology partners can help develop fact-checking tools, strengthen collaboration and improve the visibility of evidence-based reporting.
Initiatives such as those supported by Code for Africa can help journalists use technology and collaborative methods to investigate climate-related claims.
Citizens, too, need media literacy skills to distinguish credible information from false or misleading claims. Climate change must not be presented as an elite concern divorced from the daily struggles of ordinary Ugandans. It affects food production, household incomes, health, housing and access to natural resources.
The discussions at the CIPESA-UNESCO masterclass also underscored the importance of examining how rapid internet growth, dependence on digital platforms, shrinking space for environmental journalism, surveillance and harassment can affect climate reporting across Africa. These challenges make it even more important to protect credible information and ensure that climate debates remain open to evidence and scrutiny.
As Uganda prepares for future international climate negotiations, including COP31 in Ankara in November 2026 and COP32 in Ethiopia in 2027, the country needs more than ambitious announcements. It needs transparent implementation, credible public information and institutions that can account for their decisions and spending.
Parliament has a particularly important role to play. The reported failure of its committee on climate change to table a report during the 11th parliament should prompt a clear explanation of what the committee did, how its funds were used, and why its oversight work did not produce reports for the House.
When institutions fail to explain their actions, they leave gaps that rumours, conspiracy theories and misleading narratives can exploit.
The Observer first published this article on October 29, 2026, on its website
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.
The internet is the lifeblood of a modern economy. From a tech company bringing innovative solutions to the market, to a farmer using his mobile phone to check current crop prices and receive payments, connectivity has become key to unlocking economic opportunity. Building affordable infrastructure remains a challenge in many places. But connectivity now raises an equally daunting question: how to keep that access both available and rights-preserving.
New challenge of the internet era
At the 2026 Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa (FIFAfrica), co-hosted in Mauritius by the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) and Halley Movement, Executive Director Dr. Wairagala Wakabi described a shift: when the Forum began in 2014, connectivity was the leading challenge. Today, the questions concern not just getting online but data privacy, governance, and the risks of being online. In Africa and beyond, the key issue is how that vital access can be denied by actors ranging from authoritarian governments to hackers – and, increasingly, bots or misused agentic artificial intelligence (AI).
On the government side, internet shutdowns and throttling remain a persistent reality in many places. While they are often seen through the perspective of suppressing human rights, there is an important economic dimension as well. When an internet disruption stops a merchant from advertising her goods, a small exporter from contacting buyers, or a chamber of commerce from reaching its members, digital repression becomes an economic issue. The question is no longer just how to connect entrepreneurs to the digital economy, but how to keep them connected when that access becomes fragile or politically contested.
I came to this year’s FIFAfrica to explore how emerging technologies can help digital rights advocates and local businesses defend their shared online space. As in past years, the Forum brought together an impressive group of open internet advocates, researchers, technologists, and policymakers. My main practical lesson: tools that help civil society operate under pressure might also protect local businesses and their independent associations.
When efficiency can become dependency
CIPESA’s State of Internet Freedom in Africa 2026 report examines digital public infrastructure (DPI) across 11 countries, focusing on identity, payment, and data sharing systems. Such systems can lower transaction costs, widen inclusion, and improve public services, but weak safeguards can entrench exclusion and enable intrusive surveillance. As the report explains, their shared dependence on connectivity means a cable cut, power failure, cloud outage, or internet disruption can interrupt identity, payments, and public services, affecting both socio-economic and civil-political rights.
The response – like with all new technologies – is not to reject DPI advancement, but to demand transparency, data protection, due process, accessible appeals, and practical alternatives.
Tools from the digital rights’ front lines
This year, FIFAfrica’s Digital Reality Walk showcased tools relevant to civil society and local businesses, including OONI Probe, Orbot, Tor Browser, and Butter Box. Custom VPNs offer another promising application. Bitcoin and other decentralised payment arrangements, while not without their own risks, have helped civil society groups retain channels for funding when conventional banking is constrained. Such tools empower users to monitor internet restrictions, anonymise mobile traffic, browse the web securely, share digital resources offline, use private encryption servers, and retain financial freedom. These civil society applications may also help businesses in challenging environments.
What businesses are already doing
Local businesses, chambers of commerce, and business associations around the world have a direct stake in privacy, free expression, and an open digital economy. This business case for digital rights, as outlined by the Center for International Private Enterprise, provides a foundation for connecting digital rights advocacy to economic opportunity.
Leading business organisations are also paying attention to these issues. The International Chamber of Commerce advances the digital economy agenda through its Digital Standards Initiative (DSI), which promotes a globally harmonised digital trade environment; its Global Digital Economy Commission, which advocates trustworthy, risk-based AI governance and responsible cross-border data flows; and its cybersecurity and internet governance positions, which emphasise security without excessive fragmentation or restrictions on legitimate use.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also supports an open and competitive digital economy. Its U.S.-Africa Business Center’s Digital Economy Task Force has championed affordable connectivity, enabling regulations, cross-border data flows, and digital entrepreneurship; Africa Digital Innovation Competition has supported African startups developing solutions in fintech, cybersecurity, and digital supply chains; and Global Connect initiative advocates against forced data localisation and other restrictions that fragment digital markets, while promoting privacy, cybersecurity, and sound regulation of emerging technologies.
These initiatives demonstrate the business community’s recognition that digital openness underpins economic opportunity. They focus on trade regulatory ecosystems that promote competitive markets and innovation rather than digital rights explicitly. Yet, they reinforce the same principle: businesses, like civil society, need open, dependable, secure digital systems governed by predictable rules.
A shared economic freedom agenda
In November, global business leaders will gather in Washington, DC for the B20 Summit where digital transformation will feature prominently. An equally important question is what happens when technologies that connect businesses to customers, finance, and global markets become instruments of surveillance, censorship, or economic control.
The B20’s focus on innovation, trusted digital systems, small business participation, and resilient supply chains offers an opening. Businesses need more than reduced economic barriers and better digital infrastructure: they must be able to communicate securely, access information, receive payments, and organise independently.
Digital rights defenders have spent years developing technologies to preserve these freedoms under pressure. Entrepreneurs in challenging environments can learn from them to defend the basic capacity of businesses to communicate, associate, access markets, and transact.
My main takeaway from FIFAfrica is that economic freedom and internet freedom are inseparable. Digital freedom organisations bring experience operating under pressure; chambers and business associations bring knowledge of members’ operational needs and the economic costs of politically motivated restrictions. Connecting their advocacy and resilience strategies could particularly benefit smaller businesses and independent local associations facing similar challenges as civil society organisations.
Anna Kompaneck is an International Development Consultant.
As Kenya approaches its August 2027 general elections, there are growing concerns about how the country’s digital and media laws and practices could affect citizens’ ability to meaningfully participate in the electoral process.
Over the last few years, Kenya has passed or amended several laws, such as the Kenya Information and Communications Act (KICA) and the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act (CMCA), which directly impact citizens’ online participation in civic and democratic processes. The Media Council of Kenya (MCK) has flagged more than 20 pieces of legislation that contain retrogressive provisions that threaten journalists’ right to report, their privacy, and citizens’ access to information.
As in many other African countries, digital technologies, including social media platforms and Artificial Intelligence (AI), have become central to citizens’ social, economic and political participation, particularly during periods of contestation, such as elections and protests.
During the 2024 Gen Z protests, young Kenyans used AI and other digital tools to simplify legislation and produce mobilisation materials, and used social media platforms to coordinate protests. The state responded with digital repression, including online threats, unwarranted arrests, abductions, internet disruptions, and unlawful surveillance. The 2027 campaigns will run on the same digital infrastructure, with more AI capabilities and with human rights at stake.
Digital Threats as Electoral Threats
On October 6, 2026, the Collaboration of International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) attended a stakeholder engagement hosted by the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) in Nairobi, where the Roadmap to a Violence-Free 2027 General Election report was launched.
The report identified the weaponisation of AI and technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) as key threats to peaceful elections. It also found that social media is where election violence is seeded, incubated, and mobilised, and called for digital hygiene and responsible use of digital media.
In an earlier engagement with the commission, CIPESA asserted that no single institution can address digital threats alone. Clear inter-institutional protocols can, however, enable timely, coordinated and rights-respecting responses, while strengthening the accountability of digital platforms.
Digital tools and AI were used in the 2022 general elections, and their use has since grown. As these tools become more sophisticated, real and fabricated content becomes harder to distinguish, increasing the risk of harm during elections.
CIPESA’s report, Navigating the Implications of AI on Digital Democracy in Kenya, finds that AI is reshaping digital participation and access to information in the country. However, the report warns that the existing AI governance gaps, rise of AI-powered political advertising, deepfakes, and microtargeting threaten to distort democratic processes and the information ecosystem in profound ways.
Internet and platform shutdowns also contribute to the information disorder and threaten electoral integrity. Election periods carry a heightened risk of internet shutdowns, which can limit voters’ access to information, silence observers and journalists, and leave rumours unchallenged.
There is the fear that Kenya could borrow the shutdown script from neighbours such as Uganda and Tanzania during next year’s elections. The country has already seen the warning signs. Telegram is often blocked during national examinations, and internet disruptions were reported during the 2024 Gen Z protests. In response, stakeholders secured interim orders restraining the government and mobile operators from shutting down internet access. Although the orders are temporary, the final ruling and the commitment of regulators and telecom operators will determine whether Kenyans stay connected during the August 2027 elections.
Press Freedom Under Threat
Private media houses lead in listenership and viewership, and mainstream media remains more trusted than social media as a source of information. Yet these outlets face threats to press freedom and state interference, while journalists encounter harassment. Media stakeholders have condemned these trends ahead of the elections.
Defamation is also a growing concern, and courts have been faulted for awarding serious damages against bloggers and the media, even though international standards hold that public officials should be open to greater scrutiny. Fear of legal consequences can force investigative journalists to slow down, undermining the public’s right to know.
Law as the Main Instrument of Control
Participants at a multi-stakeholder dialogue on ‘Advocacy Strategies for Better Tech and Media Policies’, hosted by KICTANet and the Bloggers Association of Kenya on October 8, 2026, in Nairobi, named vague legislation as one of the most persistent threats to online expression.
Laws such as the CMCA illustrate this pattern. Enacted in 2018, the Act criminalises certain forms of online expression, including false publications. In March 2026, the Court of Appeal struck down two sections of the 2025 Amendment Act for failing the test of constitutional clarity. The ruling prompted Parliament to appeal. The court left the Act’s investigative powers largely intact, while cautioning that courts must act as gatekeepers because those powers can be abused.
Following the court ruling, further amendments to the CMCA introduced new powers for the National Computer and Cybercrimes Coordination Committee (NC4), including the authority to order the blocking or removal of websites, pages and applications without a court order. In July 2026, the High Court declared two of the new provisions unconstitutional, as the amendments could risk criminalising legitimate speech.
The pattern is consistent: Parliament passes broad provisions, civil society challenges them in court, and courts later narrow their scope or strike them down. Some earlier cases followed a similar course. In 2014, a court rejected an attempt to restrict journalists and bloggers from publishing terror-related content without permission from the national police, holding that laws limiting fundamental rights do not enjoy the usual presumption of constitutionality. In another case, the High Court found the KICA offence of “misusing a telecommunication device” unconstitutionally vague. The court held that any limit on expression must be clear, pursue a legitimate aim, and be necessary and proportionate.
The laws used to restrict expression also evolve. The Prevention of Terrorism Act has been used against protesters, and authorities have invoked the CMCA to arrest online critics, some of whom were first abducted. During the 2027 electoral cycle, advocates should watch for existing legal provisions being used in new ways.
Civil society has also shown that early engagement can influence legislation. For instance, it persuaded Parliament to withdraw a proposed KICA amendment on the liability of social media administrators. This calls for proactiveness in policy development processes, ensuring bills are monitored throughout the stages rather than waiting until they have been passed.
Recommendations
Parliament should publish bills early, allow meaningful public participation, and ensure that restrictions on online expression and access to information are clearly defined and consistent with constitutional rights.
The Director of Public Prosecutions and the police should refrain from pursuing arbitrary and politically motivated prosecutions, and from misusing or selectively enforcing laws to prosecute protesters, social media users, bloggers and journalists.
Courts should apply strict scrutiny to search, seizure and surveillance orders, and keep interim protections against internet disruption.
The Communications Authority and telecom operators should commit publicly not to shut down or throttle the internet and publish transparency reports on government takedown requests.
The NCIC, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), the judiciary, and the MCK should agree on protocols for responding to digital threats during the elections, with clear roles for each.
Media houses should adopt the MCK election guideline and AI code of conduct, invest in verification and deepfake detection, and strengthen legal support for their journalists.
Digital platforms should expand election integrity and moderation capacity for Kenya, respond promptly to TFGBV and hate speech reports, clearly label AI-generated or manipulated political content, and publish transparency reports on government requests to remove or restrict content.
Civil society should track bills at the policy stage through a shared system and pool legal analysis.
Development partners should fund legal defence for bloggers and journalists, and support strategic litigation, because cases like the CMCA challenge take years to resolve.
