Grassroots opposition movements have greatly benefited from the rapid expansion of Internet access across Africa. The response by governments, however, is often to pull the plug on the Internet to avoid social media-driven resistance to their policies.

According to a database run by online rights group Access Now, since the beginning of 2016, thirteen African countries have witnessed their government intentionally shut down the Internet during occasions such as elections and protests. This is an unfortunate rea­lity that is partly behind shrinking civ­ic spaces on the con­tinent.

Attacks on African Media Must End

As the world celebra­ted World Press Free­dom Day earlier in May, Paradigm Initiat­ive executive and digital rights expert, Gbenga Sesan, called for an immediate end to the series of attacks on the media in Afri­ca.

Sesan was speaking at RightsCon, an international conference on digital rights recently in Toronto, Canada. He said: “At Paradigm Initiative, we do this annual report focused on the state of digital rights in Africa. In 2017, we looked at twenty-one African countries and one of the trends we have seen is that things are getting worse.”

“In terms of clamp down on the media, in terms of clamp down on citizens, in terms of using excuses like national security to shut down the internet, things continue to go downhill in many countries across Africa.”

“In Nigeria, there is a new proposal on hate speech bill, and the definition of hate speech is very interesting actually, an insult is considered hate speech. So we have a situation where citizens would not be able to express themselves freely online. Next month, we will release our report on Nigeria and I can tell you right now that things are not looking great for Nigeria in terms of respect for internet freedom,” Sesan added.

According to Paradigm Initiative, 40 percent of Nigerians felt unsafe expressing their opinions online.

Africans Need Digital Rights

Digital rights experts across Africa nations are pushing for the replication of Nigeria’s Digital Rights and Freedom Bill by other African countries in order to energise the technology industry at a time when connectivity and access to the Internet remains a challenge in several regions.

Sesan said that this bill would make sure Nigeria took digital rights seriously and those who broke the law would be held accountable. “We are excited about the passage of the bill by the national assembly. We hope the national assembly would expedite actions on transmitting the bill to the presidency for the presidential assent. Our hope is that the bill is signed into law before activities for the next elections in 2019 take centre stage.”

For Africa’s digital economy to thrive, Africans needs Internet connectivity without downtime and digital rights so that they can express and share their ideas and views freely with others. This has the potential to drive innovation and to help African entrepreneurs find solutions for real-world challenges.