The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com
Africa and the Internet: a 21st century human rights issue?

African leaders could allow freedom of expression, or they could mimic
the Chinese model of building a 'Great Firewall of China' to shut down
Internet systems that allow critical thinking.

By Rosebell Kagumire, Guest blogger
posted June 13, 2011 at 2:13 pm EDT
Geneva

Last week the UN declared Internet access a basic human right. To many
in African countries, which are still grappling with challenges
ranging from health, infrastructure, unemployment, etc., this
declaration may be difficult to relate to.

I am taking part in the Internet Freedom Fellows program funded by the
US Department of State and managed by the US Mission in Geneva. The
fellowship follows up on US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s
pledge to find innovative ways to promote the use of the Internet in
support of human rights. While in Geneva earlier this week, I took
part in an event where Ambassador Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, US
Representative to the Human Rights Council, reiterated Mrs. Clinton’s
statement that the Internet is “the public space of the 21st century.”

Many in Africa are yet to see the Internet as a basic right. Yet Ben
Scott, Clinton’s policy adviser on innovation whom I had a chat with
called the Internet “the first truly 21st Century human rights issue.”

We were looking at Internet freedom and before I had asked how this
basic right would be realized for many in Africa. Mr. Scott said that
just like mobile banking (MPesa, Mobile money) is doing tremendously
well in Africa, Internet access will continue to be tied to mobile
telephone penetration in Africa. He indicated that Africa’s mobile
phone penetration has surpassed Europe’s yet it’s still at 40 percent.
This makes the Internet and mobile phone market pose both an economic
and political opportunity.

RELATED: Think you know Africa? Take our geography quiz.

In most discussions it was clear that we have two types of freedoms
related to the Internet; freedom to access Internet and freedom of
expression on the Internet. World leading economies have thrived on
information systems and making them accessible to all citizens,
therefore increasing their participation in the economy. A connected
society is going to be more prosperous and stable.

Many governments in Africa are moving to invest heavily in the laying
down of Internet infrastructure. As more people on the continent are
connected to the Internet, they will also seek a different kind of
governance because of the access to information. This is what Scott
called, a dictator’s dilemma.

    "Everyone recognizes that future of economy is largely based on
information infrastructure. So governments want populations connected
but at the same time they want to control speech on these networks and
it’s a dilemma,” Scott said. “Internet tends to shift power from
centralized institutions to many leaders representing different
communities. Governments who want to censor are fighting a battle
against the nature of the technology,” Scott said.

So the dilemma faced by that despotic leader, whom we have in plenty
on the continent, is political speech versus economic prosperity.
Scott said: “You can’t have one and leave the other and that’s the
exact dictator’s dilemma.”

This was well manifested in the recent protests in Uganda, when the
government instructed the Internet service providers to shut down
social media like Facebook and Twitter.

First, the telecom industry is one of the leaders in tax revenues in
Uganda and provides a lot of jobs for the Ugandan youth in a country
where the number of unemployed graduates has become worrying. In the
face of such a directive companies had a lot at stake, most telecoms
provide Internet and they feared a backlash. This directive was leaked
to the press by people in the telecoms who were concerned that they
would be the first victims of the backlash. So in the end the
government didn’t achieve its mission. President Yoweri Museveni
cannot choose to get the taxes from the telecoms, which help him run
the country and at the same time easily pass directives to control
information.

IN PICTURES: Top 10 countries that say Internet access is a basic right

Clay Shirky, adjunct professor at New York University graduate program
on Interactive Telecommunications said no other invention has ever
threatened the Westphalian nation-state like the Internet has done.
The states in the past were able to effectively control radio,
newspapers, and TV, but the Internet is a challenge.

    “This is a cultural and political choice," Shirky said.
"Protecting freedom of speech is a governance challenge. Westphalia,
where government controls everything, survived the 20th Century media
innovations, we are going to see if they can survive the internet.”

Hindering access

Only 10 percent of Ugandans access the Internet, yet about 10 million
of the 33 million Ugandans have mobile phones. The use of Internet is
partly hampered by illiteracy levels as well as cost, but Uganda has a
youthful population which will take up new information systems even
with just post primary education.

There are real infrastructure problems hindering access to Internet in
Africa but we are seeing more investment. According to ComputerWorld,
Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi have linked forces
together on a $400 million investment in terrestrial fiber optic
cables. The new network is expected to run close to 16,000 kilometers
from southern Sudan to Tanzania’s border with Zambia. The terrestrial
network called the East Africa Backhaul System will connect to the
submarine fiber-optic cables on the East Africa coast.

RELATED: Think you know Africa? Take our geography quiz.

However some governments have already moved to suppress freedom on the
Internet. According to recent report from Freedom House, Ethiopia’s
Internet is one of the least free in the world. Internet access has
been denied and controlled through monopolizing the communications
industry to curtail freedom of expression. In Ethiopia the few people
that access the Internet that is government controlled cannot freely
express themselves.

This kind of control is what my friend Ssozi described to me when we
spoke about the Internet as a basic right declaration. He said as long
as access to information is not a right, Internet as a basic human
right will not benefit most.
The China way

Even with infrastructure in place, many worry that some governments in
Africa may decide to go the way of China, which has put up what’s now
famously called the "Great firewall of China." It’s a deceptive path
for African governments who may be considering following suit and
having economic prosperity and also stifling freedoms of expression
and speech.

China spends a lot of money to build firewalls that prevent free
speech, but Scott believes this cannot easily be replicated. He says
even with its economic might to maintain it alone will continue to
cost China to block people from accessing information. The costs of
bypassing the firewalls are significantly cheaper than putting one up,
say observers.

In Africa, governments still have a hold on public broadcasting, which
many people rely on in the absence of cheap, accessible Internet. So
for Internet access as a basic right to be realized, or even for it to
make a difference in the way citizens in Africa can hold their
governments accountable, development budgets and strategies for both
by governments and international development organizations must take
this into consideration.

There also have to be efforts to ensure protection in the face of
growing desire by governments to curtail freedom on the Internet in
the wake of North Africa uprisings. We have seen the Internet play a
key role in protests in Swaziland, Gabon, and Uganda to some extent.

IN PICTURES: Top 10 countries that say Internet access is a basic right

At a recent meeting of bloggers organized by Google Africa and Global
Voices, there was a general concern that many African governments are
employing tactics of threatening Internet users directly instead of
cutting off the Internet or attacking their sites, which could bring
about immediate condemnation. In Uganda, journalist Timothy Kalyegira
is the first person to be arrested and charged for an online article
written in Uganda Record.

Scott said that in the Internet age there has to be a “move from
government-to-government diplomacy to a people-to-people diplomacy.”
When questioned on the recent Wikileaks case, Scott argued that
there’s a need to balance state security and Internet freedom. Yet
it’s in the same name of security that authoritarian government
crackdown on their citizens.

Shirky says the debate on whether there can be Internet freedom is
still very much open. “No country recognizes a universal right to
speak. The negotiation around this kind of freedom is going dominate
the next ten years.”

--- Rosebell Kagumire is a Kampala-based journalist who blogs on East
African affairs at Rosebell's Blog.

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