Access to the Internet should be available and affordable to all persons in Africa without discrimination on any ground such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
Access to the Internet plays a vital role in the full realisation of human development, and facilitates the exercise and enjoyment of a number of human rights and freedoms, including the right to freedom of expression and information, the right to education, the right to assembly and association, the right to full participation in social, cultural and political life and the right to social and economic development.
Related resources
This is a policy brief to assess pricing trends in Rwanda, a country which performs pretty well on pricing index but still has low internet uptake. To figure out why, Research ICT Africa is conducting a household, individual and business survey in Rwanda as well as Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Mozambique. More countries will be added on as the year progresses.
By Center for Information Technology and Development (CITAD), December 2016
Although in a number of countries the gender dimension of the digital divide has been bridged, this is not so in Nigeria where there is huge differential between men and women in terms of access and use of the internet. Within the country, it is worse in the states in the northern parts of the country. This is due to a number of factors including culture, religion, education and attitude.
In an effort to understand this and to develop appropriate strategies for digital inclusion of women in the region, CITAD undertook a pilot research aimed to understand the factors that inhibit the effective use of the internet by women in the north. This paper is part of the research undertaken in Bauchi and Keno, with support of APC, which funded the project with a subgrant.
The report presents the findings of a study on what governments are doing to inhibit citizens’ access to ICT, for example content blocks, censorship, filtering, infrastructure control, law-making, court cases; how governments are using ICT activity and data to monitor citizens; and how government bodies and functionaries are using propaganda, impersonation, threats, cloning, and other tactics to shape online content in their favour.
Full country reports are available for ten countries: Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The research was conducted as part of CIPESA’s OpenNet Africa initiative (www.opennetafrica.org), which monitors and promotes internet freedom in Africa.
Over the past years, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have been actively engaging in local, regional, national and international matters with or against the public and private sectors ever since their genesis. This paper examines the role of NGOs in Zimbabwe by analyzing the dynamics of ICT on NGO relations and their direct causal effects on the promotion of sustainable development. Through a qualitative secondary study approach which was enabled through a content analysis, the paper illustrates various factors affecting the sustainability of ICT for NGOs in Zimbabwe. The paper explores the challenges being faced by NGOs in trying to maintain sustainable
development through the usage of ICT and web-enhanced tools in Zimbabwe. The paper establishes that government interference, financial instability, poor infrastructure, low technical expertise among citizens, effects of HIV/AIDS, desire to maintain status quo constrained the implementation of ICT by NGOs to achieve sustainable development.
This is a joint stakeholder contribution to the second cycle of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) mechanism for Uganda. It focuses on women’s rights and the internet in Uganda. It explores the extent of implementation of the recommendations made in the previous cycle of the UPR and also identifies emerging concerns in Uganda regarding women’s rights online.
Restrictions on internet access – commonly known as internet shutdowns – in north-west and south-west Cameroon are now in their 14th day. The restrictions ordered by the government of Cameroon, which have been in effect since 17 January 2017, have specifically targeted Anglophone regions, reportedly following protests against the marginalisation of Anglophone Cameroonians’ cultural and linguistic rights by the government. APC notes these shutdowns with grave concern.
Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) looked at internet rights and democratisation, with a focus on freedom of expression and association online. This Special Edition, analyses more than 60 country and thematic reports in order to better reveal and build understanding of the broad range of practical actions and strategies that activists are developing.
This is an issue paper by the Association for Progressive Communication which seeks to unpack issue areas around the growing digital divide that persists to take place, the paper further tries to provide remedies on how to shrink this gap. The cornerstone of the paper is shaped by the belief that affordable and reliable internet access has become a vital means to exercise fundamental human rights and to support economic, social and human development.