News Update |
Authorities lift the months-long suspension on social media giant’s operations after it agrees to meet conditions.
Lagos, Nigeria – Solomon Elusoji, a Lagos-based journalist, felt a rush of relief early on Thursday after being able to access Twitter for the first time in seven months.
“It feels like freedom,” Elusoji told Al Jazeera. “As a journalist, I use Twitter a lot to…
News Update |
In looking back at events during the year, Reyhana Masters focuses on a few notable snapshot moments that have been understated, yet have significantly shaped the freedom of expression and access to information landscape in both valuable and damaging ways. This is so we can contemplate, how we, as citizens and civil society organisations can contribute to a more…
News update |
AFRICAN governments, Zimbabwe included, are using sophisticated surveillance equipment to snoop on citizens and to quash dissenting voices.
This is contained in a report compiled by the International Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa CIPESA — an ICT research watchdog founded in 2004.
The report confirmed that Zimbabwe is using Israel spy technology which exploits loopholes in…
News update |
PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa has signed into law the controversial Cyber Security and Data Protection Bill, which passed through the Senate in July 2021 and was awaiting Presidential assent.
The new legislation to be called Data Protection Act (Chapter 11:12) was signed Friday, amid concerns from human rights groups that Mnangagwa’s jittery government was bent on stifling dissent on social media…
News Update |
The President has proclaimed that, from 1 December 2021, certain sections of the Cybercrimes Act, 2020 will come into full force. The Cybercrimes Act aims to:
regulate and harmonise legislation in respect of offences committed using electronic mediums, and creates offences which have a bearing on cybercrime including criminalising the disclosure of data messages which are harmful and providing for interim protection…
News Update |
Statement regarding the recent announcement of a levy on mobile phones by the Minister of Finance in his budget speech.
MISA Zimbabwe supports the push by parliamentarians to scrap the US$50,00 levy on new cell phone handsets as this will impact negatively on internet access and citizens’ rights to information.
Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Professor Mthuli Ncube, proposed the…
News update |
Governments are getting increasingly sophisticated in squashing internet rights. But Gambia’s progress gives some hope.
Late in the night of November 30, 2016, citizens of the small West African nation, The Gambia, noticed their internet had gone down. Ordinarily, it might have been considered a technical fault somewhere in the system, but on the eve of a general election under…
News update |
When a staffer at the independent media website Iwacu in the central African state of Burundi tried to visit the outlet online in late October, they received an error message instead. “Hum. Nous ne parvenons pas à trouver ce site;” the site could not be found – even though the local media regulator had promised to unblock it in February.
A report published in August found…
News update |
Earlier this year, an international reporting project based on a list of 50,000 phone numbers suspected of being compromised by the Pegasus spyware program revealed just how widespread digital espionage has become. Pegasus, which is built and managed by the Israeli firm NSO Group, turns mobile phones into surveillance tools by granting an attacker full access to a device’s data. It is among…
News update |
In villages and townships, Africans are building their own internet infrastructure to connect, and protect, the unconnected
JOHANNESBURG, Nov 18 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – As a child growing up in war-torn northern Uganda, Daniel Komakech’s education was interrupted every time he had to flee rebels and hide in the bush for days to avoid being abducted.
Today, Komakech, 34, helps run…