In this post, I am going to address two main issues: the need and role of ICT policy in Africa, and the relationship between Internet and human rights. The landscape of ICTs probably is the fastest growing sector ever experienced with any medium or any transformative technology.

“He is as useless as a dog” this was part of a Facebook post by a young Kenyan photographer on the wall of a Kenyan politician, Mr. Lewis Nguyai. The Facebook post has since led to the photographer’s arrest and may ultimately result in a defamation suit. Kenya’s National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) which was set up after the post election violence in 2008 to “promote equality of opportunity, good relations, harmony and peaceful coexistence between persons of different ethnic and racial backgrounds in Kenya” claims that they received 60 complaints in February 2012 regarding defamatory comments made about individuals on social media web sites. In most countries defamation is entrenched in local laws and mostly predicated on Article 11 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees legal protection against “attacks upon … honour and reputation”.

How internet helps to shape a global civil society