The ongoing internet disruption in Tanzania is gravely undermining the integrity of the country’s general elections and jeopardising livelihoods. With citizens unable to access credible and diverse information, the blackout not only erodes public trust but also risks intensifying ongoing demonstrations. It further prevents citizens, journalists, and civil society actors from documenting human rights violations committed by security agencies and other actors.
The Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) expresses solidarity with the people of Tanzania and joins the local and international community in urging the Government of Tanzania to immediately and fully restore internet access and to refrain from any form of network disruption.
CIPESA has joined numerous international organisations in calling on Tanzania’s Ministry of Communication and Information Technology to uphold digital rights and to keep the internet on before, during, and after the elections.
CIPESA also supports the #KeepItOn coalition which is a global network of more than 345 organisations across 106 countries working to end internet shutdowns in its appeal to President Dr. Samia Suluhu Hassan to publicly commit to ensuring that all people in Tanzania have unrestricted access to the internet, digital platforms, and communication channels throughout the electoral period.
These calls come against a backdrop of declining digital freedoms in Tanzania, marked by increasing restrictions on online expression, threats to media independence, and a shrinking civic space. Restoring full internet access is not only a democratic imperative. It is essential for protecting human rights, fostering transparency, and ensuring that citizens can freely participate in shaping their country’s future.
On October 13-15, 2025, the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA), in partnership with Co-Develop hosted 20 journalists in a workshop as part of the Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) Journalism Fellowship for Eastern Africa. This is a regional initiative aimed at strengthening journalists’ capacity to report knowledgeably and critically on DPI and Digital Public Goods (DPGs) in the region.
The workshop took place in Nairobi, Kenya and brought together journalists from Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda, who are receiving both knowledge-and skills-based training alongside a reporting grant to produce in-depth DPI stories.
At an inaugural virtual workshop held in August 2025, the Fellows examined among others, Digitalisation and digital rights in Eastern Africa; UN and African Union frameworks on DPI; the DPI ecosystem in Eastern Africa; and Media coverage of DPI across nine countries, based on CIPESA’s ongoing research. The workshop also provided practical training in journalism skills, including technology beat reporting, conceptualising story ideas, writing effective pitches, data storytelling, and the use of AI in storytelling.
Report Launch
Following the workshop, a regional public event was hosted on October 16, 2025, and served to showcase findings from a multi-country media monitoring study on DPI coverage conducted y CIPESA.
The report presents the findings of a baseline study on media coverage of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and Digital Public Goods (DPGs) across seven Eastern African countries in 2024: Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. Using a mixed-methods approach that combined quantitative content analysis and key informant interviews, the study analysed 680 DPI- and DPG-related stories published in 28 major print and online outlets between January and December 2024.
The study assessed the volume, prominence, themes, sourcing patterns, and framing of stories and complemented the findings with interviews and focus group discussions involving journalists, editors, and experts. The study reveals that while media in the region are actively reporting on digital transformation, the coverage is largely event-driven, government-centric, and male-dominated. It focuses primarily on the functional benefits of DPI—such as service delivery and innovation—while giving limited attention to critical issues of governance, data privacy, equity, and citizen inclusion.
During a multistakeholder consultation held at the Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa (2025) that took place in Windhoek, Namibia, participants called attention to the urgent need to elevate African languages and indigenous knowledge systems within global internet governance. The consultation, hosted by UNESCO and the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) highlighted the urgent need for the digital ecosystem to be more representative and responsive to the realities of African users. The consultation which comprised experts from academia, artificial intelligence (AI) experts, civil society and the media took place on September 26, 2025. One of the strongest concerns raised related to the ways in which big tech companies classify African languages. It was noted that current language identification models are often inaccurate, frequently misclassifying African language datasets which has often resulted in weak or unusable models and contributed to content moderation systems that are inadequately built to address the information disorder in African digital spaces.
Opening the session, John Okande, Programme Coordinator at UNESCO highlighted the UN International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022-2032) which provides a global mandate to protect and promote linguistic diversity. He noted that this initiative aligns with the principles of UNESCO’s Guidelines for the Governance of Digital Platforms and the UN GlobalPrinciples on Information Integrity, which both call for multi-stakeholder action to ensure technology serves all communities equitably. Okande emphasised that these global frameworks “require deliberate adaptation to Africa’s unique linguistic and cultural contexts.” Various initiatives by UNESCO to promote multilingualism in cyberspace demonstrate the value of localised interventions that safeguard freedom of expression while building community resilience including. Among these is the Social Media for 4 Peace (SM4P) global initiative aimed at building societies’ resilience to online harmful content, disinformation and hate speech, while safeguarding freedom of expression and fostering peace through social media.
The consultation also laid bare how AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) can amplify harm. LLMs sometimes provide harmful or dangerous responses due to the data they are trained on being low-quality or biased. In many cases, outsourced data trainers lack supervision, and limited regulatory frameworks to ensure ethical or safe training processes.
Many LLMs lack basic safety guardrails for African languages in comparison to English where harmful queries are often flagged and blocked. This disparity is illustrative of the persisting data inequalities in the AI ecosystem.
Tajuddeen Gwadabe, Programs and MEL Lead at Masakhane African Languages Hub noted that while languages like Hausa have tens of millions of speakers, only one dialect, often the standardised, formal variant is what gets represented online. Entire linguistic communities, such as speakers of the Sokoto dialect, are rendered invisible in digital datasets.
Participants shared similar concerns as they noted that the broader online representations of African languages tend to reflect how language is used when written, and not how languages are spoken. They noted that code-mixing, slang, tonal nuance, gestures, and layered cultural meaning are nearly impossible for AI to capture without intentional investment.
“Despite African languages having a large number of speakers, digital spaces often only represent one variant or standardised dialect. For instance, in Hausa, only the standard writing from Kano is represented, while dialects from Sokoto “are hardly ever present.”
The consultation highlighted concerns in African intellectual infrastructure which serves as the basis for knowledge creation and dissemination including the facilitation of downstream productive activities, including information production, innovation, development of products, education, community building and interaction, democratic participation, socialisation, and many other socially valuable activities.
Dr. Phathiswa Magopeni, Executive Director of the South Africa Press Council, noted the urgent need to build African intellectual infrastructure alongside efforts to elevate African languages in the digital society. She highlighted the dominance of the English language including in African policy and regulatory documents across many countries and argued that this serves to protect English, but at the cost of indigenous languages.
She noted, “We are often willing to compromise the essence of our own languages in the belief that doing so will grant us access to spaces dominated by English. Meanwhile, the speakers of English continue to protect their language.” Dr. Magopeni emphasised that many African languages lack foundational datasets across academic, scientific, legal, and technical fields that are essential for the long-term strengthening of African intellectual infrastructure.
The consultation went on to raise various dynamics about the state of the current ecosystem including on the extent to which African identity gets lost online as Africans adjust their identity to suit the limitations of digital platforms. Further, there was debate on the extent to which platforms should be compelled to adapt to African contexts with consensus reached on that fact that political will is necessary to advance African languages in digital spaces. It was noted that without policymakers prioritising local languages including in Parliament, service delivery and publicly accessible data, there will be limited improvement.
Digital Rights research and political analyst Dércio Tsandzana illustrated the case of Mozambique noting that in Parliament, some members of parliament do not effectively participate all through their mandate due to their inability to speak Portuguese which is the national language. “If we don’t have politicians or policy makers that want to change first in their countries we will not see any change (by platforms).” Tsandzana noted.
Ultimately gaps in African languages online will continue to remain a sore point for disinformation and continent moderation due to the deep-seated issues concerning data quality, the nature of language use, and the limitations of AI technology.
The consensus from the consultation was that there is a need for more collaboration between stakeholders and an ecosystem-wide approach in African AI development. It was noted that universities, particularly African language departments, hold extensive expertise on standardised linguistic forms. Meanwhile, stakeholders such as governments which hold immense amounts of public data, through to community institutions such as local radio stations reflect how languages are used today all have a role to play in contributing to how African languages are integrated in AI. Thus, big tech companies need to work more cohesively with a broader spectrum of stakeholders.
Further, there was agreement in the urgency of populating the internet with more African content including stories, proverbs, folklore, and history. As AI continues to learn using whatever data is available, African content must be present and accurate. Thus there is a need to invest in indigenous language content development, strengthen African intellectual infrastructure, and to also demand accountability from global platforms. These efforts require the development of practical and context-specific action plans for policymakers and tech platforms to realise African indigenous language and knowledge systems in the digital ecosystem.
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.
At the upcoming 12th edition of the Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa (FIFAfrica) set to take place on September 24-26, UNESCO in partnership with the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) will host an expert consultation on addressing harmful content, disinformation and hate speech, by promoting digital inclusion through leveraging Africa’s indigenous languages.
The multi-stakeholder consultation aims to develop practical recommendations and foster collaborations to integrate African indigenous languages into digital safety, content moderation, and inclusion strategies.
The consultation seeks to recognising the UN International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022-2032), UNESCO’s Guidelines for the Governance of Digital Platforms, and the UN Global Principles on Information Integrity. These frameworks all call for multi-stakeholder actions to ensure technology serves all communities equitably. As such, this multi-stakeholder consultation at FIFAfrica aims to bridge global principles with African realities. Discussions will explore how to shift the paradigm from viewing local and indigenous languages as a challenge for platforms to recognising them as a critical asset for building a safer and more inclusive internet for all.
The discussions will unpack the significant moderation gap facing local and Indigenous African languages by mapping the technical, resource, and data deficits in line with UNESCO’s work on fostering freedom of expression (online and offline), the participants will also provide expert inputs in strategic consultative sessions on Resolutions 620 (data), 630 (information integrity), and 631 (Public service content) by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), which will take place at the Forum. that undermine effective content moderation and the development of AI tools for low-resource languages. Participants will also explore how Indigenous knowledge systems—particularly traditional methods of verification, dialogue, and conflict resolution—can strengthen community-level responses to disinformation when integrated into modern media and information literacy (MIL) programmes.
Complementing this, the conversations will focus on what it takes to build a sustainable linguistic ecosystem, including the policy interventions, funding models, and multi-stakeholder partnerships required to support the creation of digital tools and content, such as keyboards and NLP models in Indigenous languages like those supported by Masakhane. Finally, the discussions will consider how global frameworks can be adapted to Africa’s contexts to create practical, actionable pathways for technology companies and policymakers across Eastern Africa.
The consultation will comprise academics, technologists, civil society actors, and the media. CIPESA is pleased to receive the support of UNESCO at FIFAfrica, including enabling experts from Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa to also contribute to consultations on Resolutions 620 (data), 630 (information integrity), and 631 (Public service content) by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR). These efforts are in line with UNESCO’s work on fostering freedom of expression, including through the. Social Media 4 Peace (SM4P) global initiative.
