Africa

Participar en la Escuela de Gobernanza de Internet de Africa (AfriSIG, por su sigla en inglés) significó para mí varios descubrimientos: que existiera una institución que durante siete años estuviera enseñando de manera organizada este tema complejo, fue la primera lección.

Lo que conocía de gobernanza de internet se debía a la asistencia a varios foros globales, regionales y nacionales sobre el tema. Contar con la posibilidad de aprender los muchos temas de una manera ordenada y coherente le da mucho más sentido a aprovechar aún más estos foros en los que las… Read more

On the sidelines of the Stockholm Internet Forum (SIF) held 16-17 May, African School on Internet Governance (AfriSIG) organiser Koliwe Majama caught up with Gbenga Sesan, director of Nigeria-based Paradigm Initiative.

Gbenga is an AfriSIG alumnus, having attended the inaugural school in 2013.

In this interview, Gbenga talks about policy making… Read more

Africa this year commemorated “Women’s Month”, as March is known in a number of countries, faced with the reality of a highly gendered digital divide. That such a situation seems set to persist serves as a reminder of the need for a coordinated strategy in ensuring the inclusion of women and girls in the continent’s digital transformation.

Despite having the highest growth in internet penetration across the globe,  Africa remains the only continent whose digital gender gap has widened since 2013.… Read more

At its founding, in the late 80s, the internet promised to democratize information, level uneven grounds, and the destroy barriers associated with distance, space, and time. Through promoting communication, coordination, integration at a pace and scale beyond the ability of any government to halt, the connectivity set a foundation for dichotomies so often aligned with colonialism, imperialism, and globalization.

Today the internet is not just about inscrutable abstracts on the potential merits of its ubiquity but rather its impact and probable effects on a global scale.… Read more

Africa continues to work towards addressing the internet access and use divide. However, we now need to find a seat at the table of emerging data-driven solutions. These technologies offer the potential to make life easier and improve decision-making. Specifically, Artificial Intelligence (AI) seems to hold the promise of positively impacting education, enhancing financial services, bettering government service… Read more

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) defines internet governance as the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the internet.1 The internet is a network of autonomous networks of computing devices, which share the same core protocols enabling them to interoperate regardless of the endpoint applications and devices.2

Governance, most simply defined, is a form of control to ensure organisations, communities or societies… Read more

Negative.

That’s the ultimate effect in one word!

Social media taxes are taxes charged for the use of social media platforms. We have seen their implementation in a few African countries, including Uganda ($0.05 per day), Tanzania ($0.05) and, for a brief time, Benin. Similar taxes have also been proposed in Zambia ($0.03). The motivations behind this policy are multiple and layered; some governments are attempting to silence their opposition and those who support them, while others are using this tax as a way to make money.

What does this do… Read more