Promoting Effective and Inclusive ICT Policy in Africa

Tag Archives: Internet Freedom

  HomeCollaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA)  /  Internet Freedom
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, with several in-person sessions of the World Press Freedom Day 2026 Global Conference, which coincided with RightsCon, being 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.

11Jun

Protecting Children Online in Africa Must Move from Policy to Practice

Author CIPESA Posted on

By Patricia Ainembabazi |

Child online safety has returned to the forefront of digital governance discussions across Africa and globally. New regulatory initiatives from the United Nations, the African Union, and industry coalitions reflect growing concern about the risks children face in increasingly digital societies. Yet, while policy commitments are multiplying, implementation continues to lag.

The challenge is particularly acute in Africa, where internet access is expanding rapidly while child protection systems struggle to keep pace. As more children go online, they are increasingly exposed to cyberbullying, online grooming, sexual exploitation, harmful content, privacy violations, and emerging Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled risks such as disinformation and misinformation.

Just last month, the United Nations Human Rights Office called for stronger regulation and government oversight, publishing 10 key points to make platforms safer for children, urging technology companies to embed child safety into their product design and address the growing risk posed by AI. This reflects a broader shift in global digital policy. The Global Digital Compact has committed states to strengthen legal and policy frameworks for children’s rights in digital spaces and to prioritise national online child safety policies and standards by 2030.

At the continental level, the African Union Child Online Safety and Empowerment Policy of 2024 sets out principles on children’s safety and privacy, and participation to guide member states in developing national strategies, while the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA), UNICEF, and partners recently launched the Africa Taskforce on Child Online Protection to strengthen coordination among governments, mobile operators, technology companies, regulators, law enforcement, civil society, and young people.

Some African countries are already taking steps to strengthen child protection online. Rwanda is considering restrictions on social media access for children under 16, while Zimbabwe recently approved a National Child Online Protection Policy for 2026–2030 aimed at addressing online sexual exploitation, cyberbullying, grooming, harmful content, sextortion, and privacy violations.

These developments reflect a broader global shift in approaches to child online safety. Australia has legislated to restrict social media access for children under 16, while the United Kingdom recently concluded a national consultation examining age-based protections and enforcement mechanisms. Across several countries, governments, regulators, and civil society organisations are increasingly calling on technology companies to strengthen safeguards and take greater responsibility for protecting children online.

A broader strategy would expand efforts to ensure that while policies and frameworks on child protection are being developed, children are involved. This would help them understand the several platforms available for use, associated risks, pressures, and opportunities for digital life. The Africa Taskforce on Child Online Protection recognises this mode of participation and has now included youth representatives by integrating their voices for a child-centered digital future in Africa. Replicating this approach at the national level, through wide youth consultations, school-based dialogues, child-friendly policy forums, and participatory design of reporting and safety tools, will foster a healthy digital environment for the young.

It is against this backdrop that the Digital Rights Alliance Africa (DRAA) report, “Child Protection and Safety Online in Africa: The Law, Privacy, Challenges and Solutions, provides crucial, ground-level evidence across 10 countries – Algeria, Botswana, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. It highlights the gaps in child safety and protection online despite technological advancement and expansion.

The report highlights several recommendations that could help foster child safety and protection online, which are directed to different stakeholders, including the government, civil society organisations, international organisations, development partners, the technology sector, media, academia, parents, and the general community, and among others include;

  1. Parliaments should enact specific national laws that protect children’s privacy and safety in digital spaces, with clear safeguards tailored to children’s particular vulnerabilities, such as cyberbullying, grooming, online sexual exploitation, image-based abuse, harmful content, misuse of children’s data, profiling, and age-inappropriate design.
  2. Governments should invest in the implementation of national strategies that set out the roles of government agencies, the judiciary, data protection authorities, law enforcement actors, educators, parents, and the private sector in protecting children in the digital age.
  3. Platforms and telecom companies should design child-friendly products and services, minimise the collection and retention of children’s data, introduce age verification and parental controls, publish transparency reports, and submit protection measures to independent audits.
  4. The media should monitor, document, and report objectively, and expose all cases of online child abuse and demand accountability from the responsible parties.
  5. Civil society organisations should engage in advocacy, awareness raising, legal reform, evidence-based research, and documentation of issues affecting child safety online in order to demand and push for accountability of all the relevant stakeholders.
  6. All stakeholders must ensure that children are meaningfully included in innovation and programming, and that children and young people are actively engaged as participants in discussions, collaborations, and co-design of digital solutions.

Ultimately, for children to stay online, measures must go beyond mere policy expressions and aspirations as reiterated in the Global Digital Compact’s 2030. Laws and frameworks specific to child protection and safety online should be developed and stringently implemented. Moreover, digital service providers must be held accountable, and other stakeholders, including parents, schools, and communities, should join efforts to ensure that children are empowered to safely utilise digital technologies.

CIPESA and partners continue to advocate for rights-respecting policies that advance children’s protection, participation, access, and safe use of digital technologies, while calling on technology companies to embed these principles in platform design, governance, and accountability systems.

Peter G. Mwesige, Ph.D., giving opening remarks
08Jun

Stakeholders Call for Digital Transformation That Bridges Business and Digital Rights in Uganda

Author CIPESA Posted on

By Doreen Namuyanja |

Uganda is embracing the opportunities offered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) as drivers of national development. Both promise efficiency, improved service delivery, financial inclusion, and economic growth. However, as the country advances its digital transformation interests, questions linger on the adequacy of safeguards for citizens especially where business and rights intersect.

These questions were at the centre of a  High-Level Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue on Business and Digital Rights convened by the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA)  on May 7, 2026, under the Advancing Respect for Human Rights by Businesses in Uganda (ARBHR) project, supported by Enabel and the European Union (EU). The dialogue brought together 81 individuals representing government officials, civil society actors, private sector representatives, researchers, and digital innovators to reflect on the growing recognition that digital transformation is not simply a technical process, but also a governance and human rights issue that demands transparency and accountability.

The discussions at the dialogue revealed a tension between innovation and human rights. Systems such as digital identity (ID), payment platforms, and data-sharing frameworks   centralise enormous amounts of personal data and are reshaping power relationships between citizens, the government, and corporations.

Participants noted that in the absence of strong governance frameworks, these systems can enable exclusion, surveillance, and misuse of personal information. Further,  concerns were raised about fragmented systems across government agencies, weak interoperability, and limited public awareness regarding how personal data is collected, stored, and shared.

Meanwhile, as emerging technologies such AI take hold in the country,  the Uganda National AI Landscape Assessment positions  AI as a key digital technology driver to drive economic growth.

However, the Assessment documents the absence of a dedicated AI policy and regulatory framework, a shortage of AI skills, and insufficient collaboration between academia and the technology sector. Similarly, like its counterpart governments across Africa, Uganda is increasingly investing in DPI systems including digital ID and payment systems,  as well as data exchange frameworks. DPI is being positioned as a key pillar of digital transformation strategies across Africa. However, DPI  systems remain heavily reliant on public data and algorithmic decision-making. Thus, if   designed and deployed without sufficient citizen participation, independent oversight, legal safeguards, and alignment with the public interest, they risk becoming tools of exclusion, exploitation, and foreign dependency.

Various efforts related to the adoption of emerging technologies are underway.  Ambrose Ruyooka, the Assistant Commissioner at the Ministry of ICT and National Guidance, Uganda noted that the Ministry is taking a cautious approach to regulation by prioritising standards, policy guidance, and institutional learning before introducing binding laws. This includes efforts to domesticate the UNESCO Recommendations on the Ethics of AI and a Readiness Assessment process. The dialogue also came on the heels of the Ministry’s call for stakeholder input to the National AI and Emerging Technologies Strategy – signaling a growing policy focus on responsible digital transformation.

Further he stressed that in the midst of AI, stakeholders should not be “passive consumers” of the digital economy but actively “participate in shaping it” while pointing out that participation requires local technical capacity to “build, operate and audit” systems such as AI and DPI systems independently.While government efforts are laying the foundation for AI governance, businesses also have an obligation to innovate responsibly and adopt robust human rights due diligence processes to support regulatory compliance and foster trust and sustainability.

At a broader level, the dialogue demonstrated how digital rights are increasingly intertwined with economic rights and social justice. As a result, corporate responsibility can no longer be limited to traditional labour or environmental concerns. Companies are now expected to consider how their digital operations affect privacy, equality, freedom of expression, and access to information.

This shift is especially significant for Uganda’s small and medium enterprises (SMEs), many of which are digitising rapidly but often lack the resources and expertise needed to manage cybersecurity and data effectively.

Presentations from implementing partners, including the Private Sector Foundation Uganda (PSFU), Evidence and Methods Lab (EML), Wakiso District Human Rights Committee (WDHRC), Boundless Minds, and Girls for Climate Action (G4CA), highlighted both the scale of the challenge and the potential for practical intervention. Partner interventions on digital rights and cybersecurity are strengthening awareness and practices among entities – both rural and urban.

The European Union’s (EU) Commitment to Human Rights in Business

Laurianne Comard, Programme Officer at the EU Delegation to Uganda,  noted that the EU and its member states are currently among Uganda’s largest investors in the private sector, with over 1.4 billion euros deployed to foster sustainable economic growth and high-value exports. Specifically, she stated that the EU supports Uganda’s National Action Plan (NAP) on Business and Human Rights with over 20 billion Uganda Shillings, with a specific focus on strengthening human rights practices in business operations, particularly around labour standards and women’s rights.

Course-Correcting on Inclusion

Participants also noted that public participation in digital governance remains limited. Several civil society actors argued that consultations around national AI strategy have not been broad enough, particularly for rural communities, labour unions, youth groups and persons with disabilities. Frameworks developed without broad public engagement risk lacking legitimacy and failing to address the lived realities of those most affected.

The dialogue also reflected on the NAP on Business and Human Rights and the consultative processes underpinning its evaluation and development of NAP II. Lydia Nabiryo, Assistant Commissioner at the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, acknowledged that the government is actively working to broaden participation in the NAP’s revision.

Her remarks were a candid recognition that the first NAP, while a significant milestone, left representational gaps, and that those gaps are now being deliberately addressed. She noted, “If you have noticed this time round, we are having a more inclusive dialogue with stakeholders that were not necessarily represented in the first NAP. So, not only is the government evaluating, but we’re also course correcting.”   

Participation should not only be limited to policy processes. Shane Ssenyonga, an innovator, pointed out the need for collaborative spaces that support entrepreneurs and businesses to build scalable solutions that are responsive to social, cultural, and economic realities.

Recommendations for Action

The dialogue called for stronger human rights safeguards and access to remedy within digital transformation strategies and business operations. The strategies should be in harmony with existing digital laws and policies and strengthen oversight and enforcement by relevant institutions. For businesses, adoption of forward looking internal policies and risk management practices was emphasised to ensure trusted deployments and reduce barriers to uptake. Advocacy, documentation, and digital literacy interventions remain critical to public education and compliance monitoring.

1 2 3 … 42