Digital Rights in Closing Civic Space: Lessons from Ten African Countries

This report introduces findings from ten digital rights landscape country reports on Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uganda, Sudan, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Cameroon. They analyse how the openings and closings of online civic space affect citizens’ digital rights. They show that:

a. When civic space closes offline citizens often respond by opening
civic space online.

b. When civic space opens online governments often take measures
to close online space.

c. The resulting reduction in digital rights makes it impossible to
achieve the kind of inclusive governance defined in the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs).

The report was originally published by the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex.