By Juliet Nanfuka |
Africa’s digital future is being negotiated away piece by piece – through opaque infrastructure deals, data-sharing arrangements, and political decisions that narrow the space for journalists, civil society, and other stakeholders to gather and speak freely.
Just over a month ago, this year’s UNESCO World Press Freedom Day (WPFD) Global Conference was set to be held under the theme “Journalism Shapes Peace: Promoting Press Freedom for Human Rights, Development and Security” – and it could not have come at a more critical time, as media freedom and digital rights in Africa are under pressure.
The WPFD was scheduled to share a host city (Lusaka, in Zambia) with RightsCon, the world’s largest gathering on technology and human rights. Combined, the events were set to attract thousands of journalists, technologists, human rights defenders, and policymakers from all over the world, signaling Africa’s growing role in global debates on journalism, digital rights, and internet governance.
However, the Government of Zambia abruptly “postponed” RightsCon, citing the need to ensure “full alignment with Zambia’s national values, policy priorities, and broader public interest considerations.” According to Access Now, the conference organiser, “foreign interference” was the reason RightsCon 2026 did not proceed in Zambia.
Officials from Zambia’s Ministry of Technology and Science had purportedly informed Access Now that they were under pressure from Chinese diplomats over the participation of Taiwanese civil society actors in RightsCon. Critics have argued that this is a clear abuse of power and influence over other governments to silence dissent and restrict fundamental rights.
Following this, Zambia also lost out on hosting key WPFD-related events, which shifted online or to Paris, France. A scaled-down physical event was held in Zambia.
These developments exposed a broader pattern: civic space in Africa is not only constrained by arrests, vague laws and media intimidation, but also by foreign pressure and various forms of dependence. Zambia illustrated how quickly external political pressure can contribute to narrowing civic space on the continent, and how geopolitical influence is most dangerous where local institutions are already vulnerable and democracy is under strain.
Geopolitical tensions are no longer limited to military alliances or commodity diplomacy. They are instead increasingly being exercised through digital infrastructure, platform governance, cross-border data arrangements, cyber laws, standards-setting, mining rights, and now, the policing of civic forums. Powerful states are influencing digital policy choices through debt dependency, mineral extraction, infrastructure dependence, diplomatic pressure, or access to funding and technical systems.
The developments in Zambia illustrate a worrying phenomenon that the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) has been tracking – the steady erosion of digital rights and press freedom on the continent, through attacks on information integrity and financial dependency on larger economies.
Text Block: In Zambia, China is also deeply embedded in mining, energy, healthcare, and the construction of national facilities, including the conference venue where RightsCon was due to be held. Source: Just Security
Over the years, Chinese firms such as Huawei have invested heavily in Africa’s internet infrastructure, including through “smart city” deployments, national fibre-optic backbones, and data transmission projects including in South Africa and in Senegal. In Uganda, China has invested more than USD 110 million in the National Backbone Data Transmission Project through additional concessional financing. Critics have argued that these investments also limit civic rights, including through enabling surveillance and undermining elections.
However, not every African government decision involving China is coerced. Yet dependence can narrow the room for resistance when political demands are made, and that influence can extend into tighter restrictions on civic participation and digital rights organising.
Moreover, to frame Africa’s sovereignty challenges as a problem created only by China is incorrect, as some Western powers are also advancing strategic interests through data-heavy arrangements that can test national safeguards.
For instance, as part of the America First Global Health Strategy, the United States has signed bilateral health agreements with numerous African states including Botswana, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Lesotho, and Uganda.
These agreements tie funding to extensive data-related cooperation including long-term sharing of comprehensive national health data for periods of up to 25 years, alongside expansive health surveillance arrangements. In exchange for financial support, African states are surrendering health data without the guarantee of equitable access to vaccines or research outputs developed from that data. Zambia, Ghana, and Zimbabwe have expressed reservations about signing on, and a court in Kenya suspended implementation of the agreement pending alignment with the country’s national data protection regime.
As African countries navigate shifting technology standards, expanding digital infrastructure, and competing data governance regimes – often without a shared rights-based framework – the result is an increasingly fragmented digital landscape. This fragmentation is not accidental; it is being shaped by geopolitical interests and power asymmetries that determine who builds the technologies, who controls the data, and ultimately, who governs the digital future.
Meanwhile, African governments appear ready to trade civic rights, with countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Morocco, Malawi, and Zambia collectively spending at least USD 1 billion a year on digital surveillance technology contracts with companies in the United States, the United Kingdom, China, the European Union, and Israel.
Text block: However, the key policy challenge facing Africa is not whether governments should work with powerful economies like China, the United States, and various European states, or private technology firms. They will, and they must. The issue is whether African states have the legal, institutional, and political capacity to engage those powers without trading away civic space, data autonomy, and democratic accountability.
The continent is not without policy tools. The African Union Data Policy Framework, the African Union Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection (Malabo Convention), the African Continental Free Trade Area Digital Trade Protocol, and new calls such as the African Declaration on Digital Freedom and Democracy all point toward a more rights-respecting path. They emphasise harmonised safeguards, trusted data governance, universal and meaningful internet access, transparency, and accountability. However, implementation remains a persistent challenge, with limited progress in practice across many states.
The Zambia case offers clear lessons. African governments should require parliamentary review and public engagement for all major cross-border data-sharing and digital infrastructure agreements. Procurement contracts involving critical digital systems should be published, including provisions on data storage, access, transfers, and vendor liability. Transparency in DPI procurement processes is critical in ensuring that deployed systems are rights-respecting and those responsible can be held accountable.
While numerous global convenings are hosted on the continent, Zambia set a worrying precedent. Organisations that co-host global convenings in Africa should demand enforceable non-discrimination and freedom-of-assembly guarantees from host states as regional civil society spaces must be protected and expanded, not treated as expendable.
The spaces where African civil society, journalists, and policymakers can gather are fundamental to the digital rights movement on the continent. If African governments cannot protect the right of journalists and civil society actors to assemble freely, then they will struggle to protect anything else in the digital age. These communities are integral parts of the democratic infrastructure Africa needs to negotiate its way out of debt dependency, surveillance overreach, and geopolitical capture.
This is why global and regional gatherings, such as the upcoming Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa (FIFAfrica26), are critical. They are necessary spaces for interrogation, debate, and the forging of consensus on civic and digital rights. These are the convenings where the shifts in sovereignty are understood, including the risks of opaque cross-border data-sharing agreements, unchecked surveillance infrastructure, and politically motivated cyber laws, all of which are named and challenged through multistakeholder engagement.
Ultimately, Africa’s digital future should not be bargained away through debt dependency, opacity agreements and geopolitical pressure. It must be shaped openly, democratically, and on terms that serve its people rather than the geopolitical interests of others.
