Collaboration on Worldwide ICT Coverage for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA)
This assertion was initially revealed on cipesa.org on 16 June 2026.
Africa’s digital future is being negotiated away piece by piece – via opaque infrastructure offers, data-sharing preparations, and political selections that slim the house for journalists, civil society, and different stakeholders to collect and converse freely.
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Simply over a month in the past, this 12 months’s UNESCO World Press Freedom Day (WPFD) International Convention was set to be held below the theme “Journalism Shapes Peace: Selling Press Freedom for Human Rights, Improvement and Safety” – and it couldn’t have come at a extra essential time, as media freedom and digital rights in Africa are below stress.
The WPFD was scheduled to share a number metropolis (Lusaka, in Zambia) with RightsCon, the world’s largest gathering on know-how and human rights. Mixed, the occasions have been set to draw hundreds of journalists, technologists, human rights defenders, and policymakers from all around the world, signaling Africa’s rising function in world debates on journalism, digital rights, and web governance.
Nevertheless, the Authorities of Zambia abruptly “postponed” RightsCon, citing the necessity to guarantee “full alignment with Zambia’s nationwide values, coverage priorities, and broader public curiosity concerns.” In keeping with Entry Now, the convention organiser, “overseas interference” was the rationale RightsCon 2026 didn’t proceed in Zambia.
Officers from Zambia’s Ministry of Expertise and Science had purportedly knowledgeable Entry Now that they have been below stress from Chinese language diplomats over the participation of Taiwanese civil society actors in RightsCon. Critics have argued that it is a clear abuse of energy and affect over different governments to silence dissent and prohibit basic rights.
Following this, Zambia additionally misplaced out on internet hosting key WPFD-related occasions, which shifted on-line or to Paris, France. A scaled-down bodily occasion was held in Zambia.
These developments uncovered a broader sample: civic house in Africa just isn’t solely constrained by arrests, imprecise legal guidelines and media intimidation, but in addition by overseas stress and numerous types of dependence. Zambia illustrated how rapidly exterior political stress can contribute to narrowing civic house on the continent, and the way geopolitical affect is most harmful the place native establishments are already weak and democracy is below pressure.
Geopolitical tensions are not restricted to army alliances or commodity diplomacy. They’re as an alternative more and more being exercised via digital infrastructure, platform governance, cross-border information preparations, cyber legal guidelines, standards-setting, mining rights, and now, the policing of civic boards. Highly effective states are influencing digital coverage decisions via debt dependency, mineral extraction, infrastructure dependence, diplomatic stress, or entry to funding and technical techniques.
The developments in Zambia illustrate a worrying phenomenon that the Collaboration on Worldwide ICT Coverage for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) has been monitoring – the regular erosion of digital rights and press freedom on the continent, via assaults on informationintegrity and monetary dependency on bigger economies.
In Zambia, China can also be deeply embedded in mining, power, healthcare, and the development of nationwide amenities, together with the convention venue the place RightsCon was resulting from be held.
Supply: Simply Safety
Over time, Chinese language corporations equivalent to Huawei have invested closely in Africa’s web infrastructure, together with via “sensible metropolis” deployments, nationwide fibre-optic backbones, and information transmission tasks together with in South Africa and in Senegal. In Uganda, China has invested greater than USD 110 million within the Nationwide Spine Knowledge Transmission Venture via extra concessional financing. Critics have argued that these investments additionally restrict civic rights, together with via enabling surveillance and undermining elections.
Nevertheless, not each African authorities resolution involving China is coerced. But dependence can slim the room for resistance when political calls for are made, and that affect can prolong into tighter restrictions on civic participation and digital rights organising.
Furthermore, to border Africa’s sovereignty challenges as an issue created solely by China is wrong, as some Western powers are additionally advancing strategic pursuits via data-heavy preparations that may check nationwide safeguards.
As an example, as a part of the America First International Well being Technique, america has signed bilateral well being agreements with quite a few African states together with Botswana, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Lesotho, and Uganda.
These agreements tie funding to in depth data-related cooperation together with long-term sharing of complete nationwide well being information for durations of as much as 25 years, alongside expansive well being surveillance preparations. In change for monetary assist, African states are surrendering well being information with out the assure of equitable entry to vaccines or analysis outputs developed from that information. Zambia, Ghana, and Zimbabwe have expressed reservations about signing on, and a courtroom in Kenya suspended implementation of the settlement pending alignment with the nation’s nationwide information safety regime.
As African nations navigate shifting know-how requirements, increasing digital infrastructure, and competing information governance regimes – typically with out a shared rights-based framework – the result’s an more and more fragmented digital panorama. This fragmentation just isn’t unintended; it’s being formed by geopolitical pursuits and energy asymmetries that decide who builds the applied sciences, who controls the info, and in the end, who governs the digital future.
In the meantime, African governments seem able to commerce civic rights, with nations like Nigeria, Ghana, Morocco, Malawi, and Zambia collectively spending a minimum of USD 1 billion a 12 months on digital surveillance know-how contracts with corporations in america, the UK, China, the European Union, and Israel.
Nevertheless, the important thing coverage problem going through Africa just isn’t whether or not governments ought to work with highly effective economies like China, america, and numerous European states, or personal know-how corporations. They may, and so they should. The problem is whether or not African states have the authorized, institutional, and political capability to interact these powers with out buying and selling away civic house, information autonomy, and democratic accountability.
The continent just isn’t with out coverage instruments. The African Union Knowledge Coverage Framework, the African Union Conference on Cyber Safety and Private Knowledge Safety (Malabo Conference), the African Continental Free Commerce Space Digital Commerce Protocol, and new calls such because the African Declaration on Digital Freedom and Democracy all level towards a extra rights-respecting path. They emphasise harmonised safeguards, trusted information governance, common and significant web entry, transparency, and accountability. Nevertheless, implementation stays a persistent problem, with restricted progress in observe throughout many states.
The Zambia case provides clear classes. African governments ought to require parliamentary evaluation and public engagement for all main cross-border data-sharing and digital infrastructure agreements. Procurement contracts involving essential digital techniques must be revealed, together with provisions on information storage, entry, transfers, and vendor legal responsibility. Transparency in DPI procurement processes is essential in making certain that deployed techniques are rights-respecting and people accountable might be held accountable.
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Whereas quite a few world convenings are hosted on the continent, Zambia set a worrying precedent. Organisations that co-host world convenings in Africa ought to demand enforceable non-discrimination and freedom-of-assembly ensures from host states as regional civil society areas have to be protected and expanded, not handled as expendable.
The areas the place African civil society, journalists, and policymakers can collect are basic to the digital rights motion on the continent. If African governments can not shield the suitable of journalists and civil society actors to assemble freely, then they may battle to guard the rest within the digital age. These communities are integral components of the democratic infrastructure Africa wants to barter its manner out of debt dependency, surveillance overreach, and geopolitical seize.
Because of this world and regional gatherings, such because the upcoming Discussion board on Web Freedom in Africa (FIFAfrica26), are essential. They’re essential areas for interrogation, debate, and the forging of consensus on civic and digital rights. These are the convenings the place the shifts in sovereignty are understood, together with the dangers of opaque cross-border data-sharing agreements, unchecked surveillance infrastructure, and politically motivated cyber legal guidelines, all of that are named and challenged via multistakeholder engagement.
In the end, Africa’s digital future shouldn’t be bargained away via debt dependency, opacity agreements and geopolitical stress. It have to be formed overtly, democratically, and on phrases that serve its individuals somewhat than the geopolitical pursuits of others.