African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms

This publication is a compilation of 19 articles by African researchers, academics, journalists and human and digital rights activists on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on digital rights in Africa.

This report focuses on the content of the right to freedom of expression and gives an assessment of restrictions to the right in Southern Africa. Through this report, we have identified key trends and recommendations for states, private sector actors and civil society to consider in the development of laws, policies and measures that impact the right to freedom of expression.

APC with members of the African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms Coalition called on authors from the region to develop a series of reports on the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa and human rights. Read the summaries of the 19 papers here.

The APC Impact Report 2016-2019 encapsulates the APC network's high level impact over the four years of our strategic cycle, which ended in 2019. While the report looks back at our work, it also brings us forward through the strategic direction that we set for ourselves in the next four years.

The fifth session of the African Internet Resilience webinar series took place on 30 July. The focus of the session was to foster a deeper understanding of complementary networks and address the need for internet services in rural and underserved areas across the continent.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the dissemination of vast amounts of information, both verified and unverified. Against this backdrop, civil society organisations recently launched the Disinformation Tracker, an interactive map to track disinformation laws and policies across Sub-Saharan Africa.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed how citizens become vulnerable when governments do not protect and promote human rights in the online environment. The pandemic has critically affected the global education sector, potentially compromising the right to education.

This article seeks to examine the extent to which national and regional responses to the COVID-19 pandemic may have impacted on the regime of human rights online. The article also examines the widening digital divide and the role that telecommunication policy and regulatory frameworks play in closing this gap.