Promoting Effective and Inclusive ICT Policy in Africa

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  HomeCollaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA)  /  Internet Freedom
08Jul

Cybercrime Laws, “False News” Offences, and Online Expression in Africa

Author CIPESA Posted on

By CIPESA Writer |

As African societies become increasingly digital, governments are grappling with the balance between the protection of citizens from online harms while preserving the fundamental freedoms of free expression, access to information and freedom to participate in governance.   

The legal tools adopted to address these challenges are raising an equally pressing concern. Cybercrime and so-called “false news” laws are increasingly extending beyond their stated purpose of combating digital harm and are instead being used to regulate political speech, suppress dissent, and narrow civic space.

This emerging tension sits at the heart of CIPESA’s latest policy brief, Cybercrime Laws, “False News” Offences, and Online Expression in Africa. Drawing on legislative developments, court decisions, and recent cases from select countries, the brief examines how cybercrime legislation has evolved into one of the defining governance issues of Africa’s digital era.

Many countries have introduced offences such as “false information”, “offensive communication”, “malicious communication”, and “harmful content”. While these provisions are often justified as necessary responses to online abuse, they frequently suffer from vague drafting and broad enforcement powers. This creates uncertainty about what constitutes unlawful speech and allows authorities considerable discretion in deciding who should face criminal investigation or prosecution.

In several African countries, journalists, activists, bloggers, opposition politicians, and ordinary citizens have been arrested or prosecuted for online expression that would ordinarily fall within the boundaries of legitimate public debate. At the same time, restrictions on online speech increasingly operate alongside expanding surveillance powers, internet shutdowns, and growing state control over digital communications, reinforcing broader patterns of digital authoritarianism.

Importantly, however, this is not simply a story of shrinking freedoms. Encouraging developments in several jurisdictions demonstrate that alternative approaches are both possible and necessary. Recent constitutional decisions in Uganda and Kenya have reaffirmed that restrictions on freedom of expression must be clearly defined, proportionate, and consistent with constitutional protections. Similarly, in Nigeria legislative reforms illustrate how sustained engagement by civil society can improve legal frameworks, even if implementation challenges persist.

These developments highlight an important policy lesson as to how regulation can effectively address genuine digital harms without criminalising legitimate expression or weakening democratic accountability.

This policy brief explores these issues in greater depth, examining the emerging patterns across Africa, the evolving role of national and regional courts, and the reforms needed to ensure that cybercrime regulation strengthens both digital security and democratic governance. It concludes that the future of digital freedom in Africa will depend on how governments, courts, regional institutions, and technology companies navigate this balance.

The brief sets out concrete recommendations for four groups of actors. Governments should repeal or amend vague offences, including those relating to false information, offensive communication, and similarly broad categories, that have been used to criminalise legitimate online expression. They should prioritise civil remedies over criminal sanctions in defamation and reputation-related disputes, refrain from imposing internet shutdowns, and ensure that any restrictions on freedom of expression comply with international human rights standards.

Legislators and regulators should ensure that cybercrime and digital governance laws comply with the principles of legality, necessity, and proportionality. They should also require human rights impact assessments before introducing new cybercrime or disinformation laws and establish meaningful public participation throughout the law-making processes. Laws developed without meaningful public scrutiny and civil society engagement are more likely to undermine rights than protect them.

Regional institutions should strengthen the monitoring and implementation of regional human rights commitments and promote common standards on digital rights and accountable digital governance to guide national legal reforms across the continent.

Finally, technology platforms should invest in African language content moderation and local contextual expertise, improve transparency around content moderation decisions and algorithmic decision making, and strengthen grievance and appeals mechanisms for users in African countries, where existing processes often remain inaccessible or ineffective.

Please read the full Policy Brief here.

08Jul

What Global South Civil Society Wants from AI Governance

Author CIPESA Posted on

By CIPESA Writer |

As global discussions on the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI) governance take place at the AI for Good Global Summit and the Global Dialogue on AI Governance, questions about who shapes AI systems, whose interests they serve, and how affected communities can participate in decision-making are becoming increasingly urgent.

The Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East & Southern Africa (CIPESA) is pleased to share this joint statement by the Global Digital Justice Forum and the Global South Alliance, of which it is a member. The statement reflects concerns that CIPESA has consistently raised through its research and policy engagement, namely, current approaches to AI development risk deepening existing inequalities, and meaningful AI governance requires stronger corporate accountability, equitable data governance, and investment in public-interest AI infrastructure.

Through submissions to national AI strategies in Africa, analysis of AI governance trends across 14 African countries, and engagement with global AI policy discussions, CIPESA has consistently advocated for inclusive, rights-based approaches that ensure communities most affected by AI developments have a meaningful role in shaping its future.

The statement below brings together civil society perspectives from across the Global South and calls for an AI governance approach grounded in human rights, equity, public interest, and meaningful participation.

Joint Statement issued by the Global Digital Justice Forum and the Global South Alliance in the lead-up to the Global Dialogue on AI Governance

July 2026

The current trajectory of Artificial Intelligence (AI) innovation has consolidated the neocolonial structures of development. Today, a handful of US and Chinese transnational corporations dominate global AI systems. Driven by massive capital, semiconductor manufacturing dominance, and hyperscale cloud infrastructure, these companies control over 90% of global AI data center capacity. Their market capitalization exceeds the combined national income of many countries in the Global South. The wealth and power amassed by these corporations come at a staggering cost, borne disproportionately by the South. From the devalued, dehumanizing labor that is essential for training AI models to the critical minerals, land, energy, and water, communities in the South continue to provide the scaffolding for the AI economy and society, without the voice and power to shape and benefit from this paradigm. These systemic injustices also perpetuate deep dependencies on current and future infrastructures — over which communities lack control and sovereign agency.

The Global Digital Justice Forum (GDJF) and the Global South Alliance (GSA) believe that the emerging AI order lacks legitimacy; it grants unbridled impunity to powerful corporations, while reducing humanity and nature to objects of limitless extraction. The many summits and conversations about AI governance have failed to tackle these core issues. 

Against this backdrop, we exhort the UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance to deliver on a South-led AI paradigm, anchored in a vision of rights-based development, respectful of planetary boundaries, and committed to intergenerational justice and human rights. We urge that the Global Dialogue on AI Governance commit to the following.

  • End AI extractivism 

A ‘move-fast-break-things’ approach to digital innovation aids profit, not people. In particular, the systemic and collective risks and harms associated with the violation of human rights, the erosion of democratic processes, the abuse of the environment, and the discrimination and invisibility of marginalized citizens in AI-driven decision-making in public services remain consistently ignored and underplayed in international consensus declarations. AI innovation must embrace the precautionary principle. It must be ethically and transparently developed, democratically accountable, and grounded in a globally agreed minimum floor for meaningful and dignified work, pluralistic knowledge, diversified economies, and planetary flourishing.

  • Apply the Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) principle in international AI cooperation

The reckless path of data and AI technologies, designed and controlled by a few, has led to predatory value capture, strengthening the geo-economic and geo-political power of a handful of corporate actors and countries. The human and planetary costs arising from such opportunism are indeed a common concern. However, power diff erentials in international economic law have led to a status quo where trade, taxation, and Intellectual Property regimes clearly disadvantage developing countries, disproportionately enabling a massive transfer of wealth from the South to the North. This seriously undermines the development of digital infrastructure and human and institutional capabilities in developing countries. Such asymmetry must be remedied through global commitments to underwrite the development of regenerative, locally-led, AI infrastructures and models in the South.

  • Address corporate impunity in data and AI value chains

A global moratorium on the sale and use of AI systems that pose a high risk to human rights (such as remote biometric recognition, social scoring, spyware, and AI-driven autonomous weapons) is urgently needed. The proposed UN Binding Treaty on Transnational Corporations (TNCs) to hold global businesses accountable for human rights violations and environmental degradation in supply chains needs to be adopted without delay and appropriately future-proofed against the specific risks of harms and abuses in data and AI value chains.

  • Design a data governance framework that delivers on global equity

A ‘one-size-fits-all’ policy playbook for cross-border data flows governance will not deliver on equitable development. Development sovereignty must be recognized as a core principle in the global governance of cross-border data flows. Furthermore, the governance of the non-personal data commons requires a societal approach that includes safeguards for collective privacy and the rights of communities to steward the use and re-use of their data resources in innovation ecosystems, together with strong personal data protection rights.

  • Invest in the development of global public compute

The foundational infrastructure of compute is controlled by a few corporations. Even open-source AI models are often dependent on closed/proprietary infrastructure systems for their hosting and distribution. To ensure that data science and AI innovation deliver on public innovation, a global facility for public compute is needed. A ‘CERN for AI’ could support a distributed network of AI research centers coordinated by a central hub and provide access to innovators and researchers from developing countries.

The current trajectory of AI innovation is not working for the majority. The Global Dialogue on AI Governance must move the needle with conviction and courage towards people’s participation, planetary wellbeing, and public value. Anything less will not do justice to the people of the South.

Please find the links to prior submissions from GDJF and GSA to official consultations of the Global Dialogue below:
● GDJF’s April 2026 submission
● GSA’s April 2026 submission

01Jul

Navigating Digital Rights in Africa amidst Increasing Foreign Malign Influence

Author CIPESA Posted on

By CIPESA Writers | 

On May 21, 2026, more than 300 delegates convened in Nairobi, Kenya, for the 19th edition of the Kenya Internet Governance Forum (KeIGF) to discuss the state of digital rights and internet governance on the continent.

The KeIGF was held three weeks after the continent’s digital landscape was jolted by the Zambian government’s decision to postpone RightsCon, the global digital rights forum, four days before it was scheduled to start. Efforts to resolve the issue yielded no positive results, and Access Now, the event organiser, decided to cancel the conference.

According to the Access Now statement, officials in Zambia’s Ministry of Technology and Science had reached out to them with concerns raised by diplomats from the People’s Republic of China, who were “pressuring” the Zambian government over the planned in-person participation of Taiwanese civil society.

Proceeding with the event while excluding some participants at the behest of certain countries would have set a bad precedent. The RightsCon cancellation, however, had a ripple effect. Several in-person sessions of the World Press Freedom Day 2026 Global Conference, which was to be held alongside the RightsCon conference at the Mulungushi International Conference Centre in Lusaka, were cancelled, while others were rescheduled to later dates.

These events highlight the growing influence of national governments on the success or failure of regional and international digital rights convenings. As Access Now explained, such convenings often involve extensive diplomatic engagement between conference organisers and host countries to secure their commitments, among other things, to respect the fundamental human rights of all participants and to ensure smooth logistical preparations. For example, in March 2026, the Zambian Ministry of Technology and Science issued a statement announcing that the government would be a co-host of the RightsCon conference.

Access Now’s decision was a timely reminder that fundamental human rights, including digital rights, are non-negotiable and interdependent, and that national governments should not be at liberty to choose which rights to respect.

Growing Incidents of Foreign Malign Influence in Africa

Foreign governments’ interference in the internal affairs of African countries is not new, and while incidents of foreign malign influence in Africa’s trajectory toward digital authoritarianism have been well documented, the RightsCon cancellation was possibly the first time a foreign entity worked so blatantly to influence the direction of a digital rights convening itself. This clearly demonstrated the dangers posed by the growing economic and power imbalances between African countries and their trading partners.

Because many African countries have turned to China and Russia for support for their economic and security agendas, respectively, they have inadvertently surrendered part of their sovereignty to these superpowers due to what is referred to as the “debt trap”. 

For example, in April 2026, China was reported to have scrapped tariffs on all African countries except Eswatini, which maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan, a move that contributed to friction between Access Now and the Zambian government. Earlier in 2022, the Chinese government was reported to have “forgiven” 23 interest-free loans to 17 African nations after it had also cancelled more than USD 3.4 billion in debt and restructured around USD 15 billion in debt in Africa between 2000 and 2019.

Reports by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) and the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) have shown that geopolitical interests have often crossed national boundaries, with powerful nations exerting influence on the legal landscapes and digital public infrastructure of many African countries. 

According to an Institute of Development Studies study that mapped smart surveillance technologies in 11 African countries, many African countries that have embraced smart city surveillance have tended to rely on China for financing their digital public infrastructure, including tools, software, and capacity-building, which are often deployed to conduct digital surveillance of their citizens. Digital rights actors and individual government critics have often borne the brunt of these surveillance practices.

Unfortunately, the deployment of these digital surveillance tools and software is often characterised by limited oversight and a lack of transparency regarding their purchases and operations, raising serious concerns about their intentions and their impact on human rights. 

In April 2026, a team of United Nations Experts raised serious concerns about the proliferation of digital surveillance technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), noting that their misuse by states in law enforcement, counter-terrorism, border management, and national security and military contexts poses serious human rights risks. 

Disinformation and Information Warfare

Africa has also become a battlefield for disinformation campaigns as different superpowers scramble to expand their spheres of influence. Foreign disinformation campaigns are particularly prominent during periods of contestation, such as elections, protests, and civil strife. 

Because they are more covert, disinformation campaigns have become more insidious as they are rarely noticeable or easily associated with foreign actors. For example, in countries such as Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Nigeria, Russia has worked with locally based influencers and digital content creators to amplify pro-Kremlin narratives and messaging while keeping their connections to Russian-backed initiatives a secret. 

In 2024 alone, there were at least 80 documented cases of Russian-linked disinformation campaigns targeting more than 22 African countries. Indeed, several of Africa’s fragile autocracies, such as Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic (CAR), Mali, and Sudan, have come to rely on Russia’s well-coordinated digital propaganda to sustain their stay in power. 

Mitigating the Malign Influence

Foreign malign influence has continued to thrive in Africa, partly due to African countries’ overreliance on the “generosity” of superpowers seeking to shape Africa’s political, social, and economic landscape. While development partnerships and support are critical to a country’s development, these should be anchored in rights-respecting frameworks and geared towards benefiting ordinary citizens.

Taken together, the various aspects of foreign malign influence are undermining the democratic practices of many African countries, including electoral processes, while emboldening autocratic leaders to embrace digital authoritarianism.

For digital rights activists, especially in Africa, it is therefore important to understand and address the factors driving the expansion of foreign digital malign influence and to develop strategies to counter it, including mechanisms to hold governments accountable when they purchase and deploy digital surveillance tools and software. 

More specifically, digital rights actors should:

  • Strengthen Digital and Media Literacy

Because foreign malign influence most often thrives in contexts with limited media and information literacy, weak media systems, and digital inequalities, it is important that rights actors build systems that promote information integrity, such as media independence, fact-checking, and independent journalism, to counter information manipulation. In most of Africa, the media and information ecosystems are so integrated, enabling the viral spread of misinformation through influencers and digital content creators with large followings. Quite often, media houses amplify the disinformation tapped from influencers with large followings without verification.  

  • Build Stronger Coalitions and Regional Networks

In many African countries, governments have often used the tried-and-tested “divide and rule” approach, mischaracterising digital rights actors as either sympathetic to them or “enemies”. The main purpose is always to isolate certain actors deemed too critical. 

To mitigate the risks associated with engaging with less democratic governments, digital rights actors should aim to build synergies and support systems, ensuring that collective voices among like-minded organisations, such as academia, media, and telecom companies, can, among other things, challenge government excesses. This could include issuing joint statements, which is critical as it does not expose any entity; and providing technical and financial assistance to more at-risk organisations. 

  • Leverage Digital Rights Convenings

Digital rights convenings such as the Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa (FIFAfrica) and Internet Governance Forum have become strategic platforms for digital rights advocacy and engagements, especially with national governments. It is therefore important that digital rights actors use these platforms to continuously ask duty bearers the hard questions regarding the conduct of due diligence reports on any technologies imported into the continent and their impact on fundamental human rights. 

For example, Africa will host several international and regional digital rights convenings, including the 21st Global Internet Governance Forum, which will be held in Kenya in December 2026, the fourth time the event will be held on the continent. In September, Mauritius will host the 13th FIFAfrica edition, while Ghana will host the 15th Annual Africa Internet Governance Forum in November 2026. 

These events present great opportunities for digital rights actors to reflect on Africa’s digital rights record and the progress made so far, and to table concrete African positions on digital rights, including data sovereignty, Artificial Intelligence, and platform accountability.

25Jun

Accelerating Digital Accessibility and Solutions for Africa’s Future

Author CIPESA Posted on

By Raylenne Kambua |

More than 150 million persons with disabilities across Africa navigate a digital landscape not designed for them, with inaccessible websites, unusable mobile applications, unreachable government services, and educational platforms that often lock them out. This exclusion carries a direct economic cost, which the World Bank estimates at 3–7% of countries’ Gross Domestic Product.

Increasingly, connectivity for persons with disabilities has become less a question of infrastructure coverage and more about accessibility and meaningful usage. While internet services are available to 85% of Africa’s population, 64% of those within coverage do not use them, with persons with disabilities among the most excluded groups. The exclusion has been reinforced by the high costs of devices, with some markets taxing entry-level smartphones up to 50%, making them unaffordable for low-income households.

Figures from the Assistive Technology Landscape in Africa Report show that only one in ten people who need assistive technologies across the continent have access to them, while 85% of mobility devices are still imported. This is a reflection of weak local production systems and heavy reliance on external supply chains.

At the seventh Inclusive Africa Conference, convened by inABLE in Nairobi from June 2–4, 2026, conversations examined whether Africa’s fast-expanding digital economy works for everyone or reproduces recurring forms of exclusion.

As Irene Mbari-Kirika, Executive Director of inABLE, noted, many technologies continue to fail because they are not developed with persons with disabilities in mind. This means that such devices can not be used by millions of potential users, and it has direct consequences for several users’ financial autonomy, privacy, and safety, especially in digital financial services such as mobile money.

Africa’s challenge is therefore not only access to assistive technologies, but the absence of a coherent local ecosystem for their design, production, distribution, and implementation. Building a sustainable assistive technologies value chain grounded in local materials, regional manufacturing, and culturally and linguistically relevant design is increasingly central to closing this gap.

The structural barriers to inclusion are deeply embedded across sectors, including in the education sector, where teacher training often excludes digital accessibility, curricula are rarely tested with assistive technologies, and assessment methods continue to assume uniform modes of learning and expression. These gaps, including digital literacy gaps, are compounded by the limited availability of African-language datasets, particularly for learners with communication disabilities, which constrains the development of inclusive digital and artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled learning tools.

Notably, AI presents both opportunity and risk for digital inclusion. The outcome depends on whether inclusion is embedded in design, data, and deployment. On the upside, AI-enabled tools have expanded access for blind and low-vision users, while applications in healthcare are widening access to psychosocial support on a continent with less than two mental health professionals per 100,000 people. Real-time sign language translation and voice-to-text tools are also creating new pathways for participation.

At the same time, without targeted upskilling and bias audits, AI risks simultaneously opening one door for persons with disabilities while closing others. For example, AI systems are automating roles such as data entry, transcription, and customer service, which have historically provided key employment pathways for persons with disabilities. Yet, AI models trained on biased or unrepresentative datasets and automated decision-making processes risk excluding persons with disabilities from recruitment systems.

Mercy Ndegwa, Director of Public Policy for Africa at Meta, stressed this point, noting that AI systems can only reflect communities whose data and voices are included in their design and training. This makes the inclusion of organisations of persons with disabilities in AI governance not only a rights imperative but also a technical requirement for building functional systems.

However, African-language datasets remain severely underdeveloped,  and the cost of building them at scale is prohibitive for most actors.

The launch at the summit of the development of Africa’s first Harmonised Digital Accessibility Standard for ICT Products and Services marks an important step toward continent-wide alignment. The 24-month participatory process targets adoption across all 45 African Organisation for Standardisation (ARSO) member countries. The regional standard will be adapted to African languages, culture, and infrastructural realities, changing the procurement baseline for governments while setting a compliance reference for private technology developers across the continent. Fourteen countries have reportedly confirmed participation.

Throughout the discussions, the principle “Nothing about us without us” remained central, with an acknowledgement that persons with disabilities are contributors, decision-makers, and leaders in designing systems that affect them, and not merely end-users or research subjects to be consulted only after decisions are made. Design consultant Rama Gheerawo framed this through three registers: designing for, designing by, and designing with persons with disabilities as co-creators throughout all processes.

CIPESA has been emphatic that governments, regulators, and telecommunication operators bear the greatest responsibility for digital inclusion for persons with disabilities. Civil society efforts cannot substitute for enforceable action and measurable implementation. Limited capacity to engage in technical standard-setting also continues to hinder progress on digital rights for persons with disabilities. At the same time, fragmented approaches and shifting donor priorities are placing increasing strain on the sustainability of this work.

The European Union (EU) AI Act sets a benchmark for how regulation can protect marginalised groups, while the African Union (AU) Continental AI Strategy provides guiding principles on how AI should be developed, governed, and used across the continent. However, no African has developed definitive AI legislation, although several are developing policies or strategies. As CIPESA has emphasised, AI policy frameworks across Africa must include persons with disabilities from the outset.

More specifically, efforts must be geared toward fixing AI at the source by including representatives of persons with disabilities in training data, ensuring algorithmic accountability, and making AI-powered public services accessible to all. Moreover, all AI regulations and policies must have explicit disability provisions.

Additionally, governments must reduce sector-specific taxes on entry-level assistive devices and assistive technology hardware, and mandate that Universal Service Access Fund disbursements include explicit, measurable targets for connectivity for persons with disabilities.

16Jun

Is Africa’s Digital Future Being Bargained Away?

Author CIPESA Posted on

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.

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