A report on the state of digital rights in Southern Africa has praised efforts by international locations within the area to place in place information safety legal guidelines as one of many methods of enhancing digital rights amongst residents.
The report titled “Securing digital rights in Southern Africa: A name to motion for stakeholders,” and authored by Prof Admire Mare of the Denhe Reruzivo Consultancy Hub, is the fourth in a collection which addresses digital rights associated questions within the ten international locations that make up the Southern Africa Improvement Neighborhood (SADC).
Printed by the Affiliation for Progressive Communications and Namibia Media Belief, the report explores the extent to which international locations on this area of Africa live as much as the accountability of defending the precise to freedom of expression, entry to data, proper to privateness and proper to cybersecurity within the digital age.
The report contends that whereas there’ve been constructive developments in enhancing digital rights such because the passage of knowledge safety legal guidelines and the organising of knowledge safety authorities amongst different actions, there’ve additionally been unfavourable developments as seen in surveillance practices in some international locations, draconian legal guidelines that inhibit freedom of expression and even points like necessary SIM card registration.
“The enactment of knowledge safety laws and coverage, the event of jurisprudence on digital rights and elevated advocacy from civil society actors on digital rights are among the main wins within the final 5 years,” reads a portion of the report’s findings.
The writer mentions, for instance, that international locations corresponding to Zambia and Zimbabwe not solely have entry to data legal guidelines of their statute books, in addition they have information safety laws. So does eSwatini, in addition to South Africa, which has had a legislation on private information safety in place since 2013.
These strides however, the report factors out that acts of digital rights violations have additionally been flagged in among the international locations, elevating considerations amongst activists in regards to the impression and sustainability of the good points being recorded.
“One main concern has been growing circumstances of insidious types of illegal surveillance in Angola, DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo] eSwatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe,” the report mentions, stating that “many of those practices have taken the type of cell phone tapping, social media monitoring, facial recognition programs, protected metropolis initiatives, cloud computing infrastructures and sensible policing initiatives.”
The report concludes with what the writer labels as “a name to motion” for varied stakeholders corresponding to governments, information safety authorities, the media, civil society organizations, and teachers, to make sensible advocacy interventions geared toward higher selling the precise to freedom of expression, entry to data, proper to privateness and cybersecurity within the digital age.
In April, African governments had been referred to as upon to make sure safeguards within the rollout of digital ID packages in a report that chronicled the state of digital rights and inclusion in 26 African international locations.
In the meantime, talking just lately on the World Summit on the Data Society (WSIS), Chief Digital Officer of the United Nations Improvement Program (UNDP), Robert Opp, defined the work which the UN company has been doing to assist digital transformation initiatives that prioritize folks’s privateness and rights.
This, he stated, is a part of an ongoing course of of making a framework for safeguards that are crucial in making certain inclusivity, belief and transparency within the implementation of digital public infrastructure initiatives.
Article Subjects
Africa | biometrics | information safety | digital identification | digital inclusion | digital public infrastructure | laws
