By Morisola Alaba
Due to increasing mobile phone penetration, Internet access has taken a huge leap in Africa in recent years with those online on the continent now estimated to stand at about 50 million.
However as more people get online to reap the benefits of the digital age, so have concerns grown about how to effectively regulate this “brave new world”! As more and more citizens find
their voices online, many governments are frantic that they are losing the battle to control
their populations.
Many governments, lacking the legal expertise and technical knowledge of the online
Environment, wrestle unsuccessfully with the task of responding to the criminal activities
that have also found their way online. The more autocratic governments across the continent jump on the excuse of combatting cybercrime to constrict online freedoms.
It is against this background that the African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedom
was developed as a Pan–African initiative by a group of civil society organisations and
individuals in order to ensure that human rights in the online space is protected and to
address the challenge of ignorance of legislators in Africa whereby many of the
Legislatures harvest internet laws from other countries without any regard or relevance to the local context.
The result of this situation was the passage of a rash of Internet laws in countries across the
African continent which fell below acceptable human rights norms and standards.
Although the African Declaration is a document that has no binding effect on any African
government, it has nonetheless had over 200 endorsements from various individuals and
organisations working to expand the guarantees of human rights in the digital space.
Nigeria, in the Spirit of the Declaration, has been able to come up with a proposed Law,
which, it is believed, will have a positive impact on digital rights whereby the rights that
are enjoyed offline will also be guaranteed and enjoyed online in accordance with the
principle enunciated in a ground-breaking United Nations Human Rights Council
resolution adopted in July 2012.
The proponents of the African Declaration see it as a minimum standard on digital rights
and internet freedom on the continent. However, five years after its adoption, there is still
a huge challenge of ignorance about the Declaration itself and its content among a large
number of stakeholder groups, including governments, parliamentarians, the Media, civil
society organizations and activists, Internet regulatory bodies, national human rights
institutions, the Judiciary, among others.
The pervasive culture in many countries on the continent with respect to legislating on
digital issues and the Internet remains a “copy and paste” with the tendency of many of
these governments leaning in favour of the more repressive examples of Internet Laws.
Additionally, not many people understand why the guarantees of human rights online
matters. In country after country, the vast majority of ordinary citizens live in blissful
ignorance about how their rights are violated online in a sustained and relentless manner.
Such people need to be properly enlightened so that they can have a better appreciation of
the need to protect themselves, their data and their communication online and, hopefully,
lend their support and efforts to ongoing advocacy for the guarantees of human rights in
the online environment to be enshrined in our laws.
It is clear that the African Declaration is more prominent on a continental scale than at the
sub-regional and national level, while most of the laws and policy-making efforts which affect
people’s enjoyment of human rights online are happening at the national level and in some
cases, within sub-regional frameworks. This is a clear gap that needs to be addressed if the
Declaration is to achieve its true purpose, which will evidently require more advocacy and
awareness-raising activities at these levels.
Sensitisation of stakeholder groups, especially ordinary citizens, about the Declaration
needs to be stepped down to national and sub-regional levels, localised and presented in
such a way that people begin to understand and see the benefits of the Declaration in their
personal lives.
In order to create more awareness about the Declaration at the sub-regional and national
levels, it is imperative that efforts are made to identify stakeholders who need to be aware
of the document as well as the need for more engagement with stakeholders such as the
legislative bodies, national human rights institutions of various countries and the Judiciary.
There is also a need to involve the Media in the promotion of the Declaration. Again, in
order for the Media to be effective in promoting it, media practitioners also need to understand it, be conversant with its provisions, know its benefits and be able to communicate these to
ordinary citizens and members of the public in their reports.
It is also important that various creative means of getting the letters and spirit of the
Declaration to citizens are deployed, particularly in local languages and audio formats in
order to reach a wider range of people.
*Morisola Alaba is a legal practitioner passionate about Digital Rights issues.