Organization: Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA)
Title: Reflections from the Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa
Description:
We will share insights and learning and emerging from discussions from the September 2017 Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa (FIFAfrica) - an annual gathering which convenes multi-stakeholders from across the continent to discuss current trends impacting internet freedom. For the first time, we will have hosted the Forum outside of East Africa where we have a history of setting the agenda for suggesting actions towards overcoming the challenges and leveraging opportunities to advance internet freedom in Africa. This year, we aim to have a Southern Africa perspective following the hosting of the Forum in Johannesburg, South Africa. As such, we are co-hosting the Forum alongside the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), a long-time collaborator of CIPESA. The FIFAfrica will explore discussion on topics including litigation for digital rights, digital security, the economic impacts of internet shutdown, violence online, fake news and more from an African perspective.
Thus, we seek to share bite-sized highlights from FIFAfrica with the audience in Geneva to have a greater sense of the dynamics that internet users are facing in the continent. This will be coupled with dissemination of indepth reports on the State of Internet Freedom 2017 of various countries including South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, DR Congo and Tanzania.