Here's an interesting article to share with all you great people out there.

Abdoulie Jallow

Source: http://www.freedomforum.org/technology/1999/9/1africafreepress.asp


Internet plays increasing role in Africa's free press
By Joe S.M. Kadhi
Special to free!

9.1.99

a.. What do you think? Have your say in The Forum.
             (Editor's note: Joe Kadhi is a professor of journalism who
teaches in Nairobi. This is excerpted from a paper he delivered at a Freedom
Forum technology conference in Johannesburg on Sept. 3.)

            Independent African journalists have grasped the Internet as the
key to a truly global free society, with its promise of universal social
justice, unhindered by tyranny or by national boundaries.

            For decades, journalists have languished in jails for telling
the truth about official corruption and misrule by dictators, in Africa as
around the world. But now, the days when African dictators could muzzle the
press by owning all the mass media are about to end.

            African government-controlled radio and television stations that
have for years been used as political instruments to perpetuate despotism
now face a new challenge that promises to protect the voice of the people
and safeguard democracy. That new challenge is the Internet, which can be
seen in Africa as a major force for democratic empowerment and the
empowerment of often-suppressed journalists.

            Unprecedented in any other medium, the Internet poses the
greatest threat to African dictators who have committed untold crimes and
jailed the journalists who dared expose them. Today, courageous journalists
can do their exposes freely through the Internet, enjoying free speech and
open access to information and ideas that were taboo in the past.

            Today, the Internet is also the main hope of the free thinkers
of Africa to establish the foundation for a participatory medium for mass
communication that will liberate the often muzzled Fourth Estate.

            The barriers that were created by African dictators to confine
news and information about their misrule and corruption are falling due to
the global communication systems that have been revolutionized by the
Internet, making the availability of unlimited information a process that is
almost instant.

            Everything that the dictators used to outlaw — free press, free
radio, free television and even free postal services — are combined on the
Internet and made available to the people freely and without the consent of
the dictators. In broadcasting alone, long controlled by governments,
frequently silenced voices of free African journalists can today be heard by
millions through computers, modems and telephone lines.

            According to the press-advocacy group Article 19, an estimated
100 million people in more than 240 countries now have access to the Net. A
staggering 350 million Web pages provide news and information on every topic
imaginable. With content as wide as human imagination, the Internet is now a
platform for a perpetual dialogue among the free people of the world,
including a growing number of Africans.

            Though Africa has one of the world's poorest telephone networks,
the Internet has spread rapidly throughout the continent: more than 50 of
its 54 countries have some form of access to it. Net access has opened new
avenues, widening the range of free expression and empowering the people to
a level of information freedom and human rights respectability previously
almost unimaginable.

            The beneficiaries of this new development include educational
institutions, business, news media and civil society. All use e-mail to
exchange political, scientific, economic, social and cultural news in a
manner that has already begun to advance human rights values. It is a new
power of democracy, used for the first time by Africans using the Internet
as a new platform for free speech.

            How dictators control news media
            Sometimes it is not easy to explain in detail how dictators
control the media in Africa. But in my own country, Kenya, government
control of the electronic media is established by law, ensuring a government
monopoly of the airwaves. The law also ensures that licensing
radio-communication stations, installing broadcasting facilities and
deciding where they will be located are all directly under the control of
the central administration.

            These legal provisions have been used effectively to limit
competition as well as to silence alternative voices in Kenya's electronic
media. The problem of government control of the electronic media in what is
ostensibly a pluralistic society is further aggravated by the concentration
of control in the ruling party, the Kenya African National Union, or KANU,
which is in turn controlled by one individual, President Daniel arap Moi.
The laws controlling the electronic media in Kenya have rendered
broadcasters, the government, the ruling party and the president effectively
inseparable.

            This link is aptly illustrated each day by the selection of
stories for Kenya's television and radio news. The national radio and
television stations air news items on a daily basis directly or indirectly
describing the magnanimity, courage and wisdom of the president as the first
item of the news, no matter what else is happening in the country or the
rest of the world.

            When the editor of the East African newspaper, Joseph Ondindo,
commented on this manner of handling news, his comments became an issue in
Parliament, where a chorus of condemnation was sounded by indignant pro-KANU
members.

            The central control of the airwaves by the government also goes
against international law, which calls for freedom to seek, receive and
impart information and ideas through all the media and regardless of
frontiers. The right to communicate, together with the right of access to
the means of expression, have been violated by African dictators every
single day. These are vital human rights, rights which the Internet is now
restoring to the people.

            Regimes try to rein in Net threat
            However, as they realize the power of the Internet and its
ability to empower the people to criticize freely the misdeeds of those in
authority, many African governments are now seeking ways to control and
censor the Internet. They do so by claiming to fight against pornography,
but the real reason for the anti-Internet campaigns is to silence political
opposition.

            These anti-Net campaigns are being pursued without concern for
undermining the principles of free expression enshrined in international
law — or even the constitutions of their own countries. The new hope of
empowerment therefore faces the danger of censorship and control by the very
dictators most threatened by the Internet and democratization.

            Another threat to the new freedom of the Internet is, in my
opinion, the excessive commercialization of cyberspace, which has already
clogged the Net with trade displays at the expense of the voice of the
people and a civil society.

            Also, the process of depoliticizing cyberspace has had a
negative effect to the extent that what we see on the screens may be less
culturally diverse and may provide fewer alternative political views. Thus
the uniqueness of the Internet as a vehicle for freedom of expression and a
tool for democratic empowerment may be eroded.

            The Internet's uncontrolled character, which authenticates its
promise for democracy, must, in my view, be preserved if it is to champion
the course of social and economic justice. Preserving this uncontrolled
character of the Net will also ensure that suppressed people around the
African continent can be given a voice, a chance to participate in the
global information society and an opportunity to benefit from it.

            There may be limitations imposed by infrastructure and
resources: Though many African governments have publicly committed
themselves to liberalizing and developing the continent's telecommunication
networks, it is uncertain whether the promises made in international forums
are then backed by committed political will. In addition, the lack of
economic resources may in some countries make those promises no more real
than fairy tales.

            Mere treat for the elite?
            In addition to being extremely expensive, at least for now, the
Internet poses yet another serious problem in Africa: It threatens to create
or reinforce a small, very highly informed elite in urban areas, while the
majority of the people in rural areas continue to suffer from information
starvation. The new technology has given a few Africans a new opportunity to
engage in free political, social and economic dialogue, yet at the same time
it may marginalize the majority of the people who have no access to it.

            Consider the fact that the Internet depends on telephone.
Millions of Africans have never used a phone, and they have no hope of ever
using one. Confined mostly to capital cities, the telephone in Africa is
regarded as a luxury, enjoyed only by a relative few elitist members of the
establishment.

            Last year, Dr. Pekka Tarjanne, Secretary General of the
International Telecommunication Development, drew the attention of the world
community to the danger of the global information society becoming global in
name only. According to Dr. Tarjanne, the world was divided into what he
called "information rich" and the "information poor."

            But despite the Internet's inaccessibility to the majority of
the people, this new media technology is being used by a few in Africa who
have it to serve the many in Africa without it.

            For example, it is being used by African human rights
organizations in such countries as Kenya and Zambia to fight for the rights
of the people on an international level. Thus the voice of oppressed people
can be heard in all parts of the world, because the few human rights
activists have an international audience provided by the Internet.

            Because of the Internet, dictatorial regimes in Africa are no
longer able to suppress information about human rights advocacy. Details of
human rights violations in Africa can be known all over the world literally
minutes after they are committed.

            African dictators who once arrested, tortured and detained
journalists and political activists freely but in secret are today exposed
to the international community almost immediately after they commit these
crimes. International human rights organizations such as Amnesty
International can and do intervene much more speedily when illegal arrests
are made. Many political prisoners have been saved by appeals from the donor
communities when they learn about the arrests and torture through the
Internet.

            Creating a gathering place
            Journalists in Kenya, Nigeria and Zambia who have in the past
had their newspapers impounded are today able to network and discuss their
problems through organizations such as the Toronto-based International
Freedom of Expression Exchange, or IFEX. These organizations have introduced
media freedom on the continent beyond the reach of the censors' pen. And
today there are scores of African newspapers on the Internet, and people
read them all over the world.

            And, though still extremely rare, some enlightened African
governments use the Internet to initiate public debate on important policy
issues. South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa
was one example.

            Access to economic, social and political information can bring
nations together and promote mutually beneficial exchanges concerning
health, education and research. The Internet in Africa is providing all of
these services, though still on a very limited scale. Used properly, the
Internet could help Africans improve their health services by providing free
medical advice to community health workers and to remote village hospitals.
In the field of education the Internet's benefits are vast, including
distant education and distribution of reference and research materials.

            Much of the economic, educational and even cultural information
about Africa today is more easily available from Western universities than
from universities in Africa. But now, the Internet has started to provide
African scholars an opportunity to draw on these resources — and to share
their knowledge with other scholars from the rest of the world.

            Even with cultural criticisms, a lifeline
            Despite these advantages there are still some Africanists who
oppose the Internet and are critical of the spread of what they call
cultural imperialism from the West. Their argument is that, unless more Web
sites are devoted to African cultural values, the continent will never be a
fully participating citizen of the global village.

            But despite this argument, the Internet in Africa has formed a
lifeline to the rest of the global village, used to bring rapid humanitarian
relief after natural or manmade disasters. The Internet has also been able
to make the world understand African problems faster through the CNN, New
York Times and Los Angeles Times Web sites, so that potential donors can
react quickly to disasters that confront many African countries.

            At the moment, for example, victims of the war in southern Sudan
depend for their daily survival on international humanitarian assistance
provided by Operation Lifeline Sudan, an organization that depends entirely
on the Internet to communicate with the donor nations. Emergency food and
medical supplies helping thousands of homeless war victims of southern Sudan
would not be as readily available as it is today without the Internet.

            And according to World Vision, its Web site is visited by as
many as 35,000 people a month and has been responsible for as much as $
180,000 in donations per month for poor African nations.

            However, the spread of the benefits of the Internet in Africa,
including free expression and dissemination of news and views with little
government interference, may face a challenge and interference on another
front: Dictatorial governments are exploring indirect controls on the Web by
controlling Internet service providers. Using their powerful political
positions, they are working to control the new technology to restrain its
users through the monopolization of Africa's telecommunication services.

            Needless to say, monopolization of Internet access services by
African governments also poses a threat to freedom of expression. The total
governmental control of telecommunications services persists, though it may
run counter to many African constitutions guaranteeing freedom of
expression, and occasionally has been challenged in court.

            In Zimbabwe, for example, government control of
telecommunication was challenged in 1995, when a private cellular operator,
Retrofit, objected to the state's monopoly. The court ruled in favor of
Retrofit and accused the Government of violating Section 20 of the
constitution, which protects freedom of expression.

            Adopt a 'First Amendment'
            One of the most effective methods of stopping such indirect
control is to call for the enactment of legislation similar to the First
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, to protect and promote the free exchange
of ideas. Such legislation, in my view, is necessary and desirable.

            African dictators are aware that attempts to silence the Net
have been made by many countries, including some Western nations such as the
U.S. in 1997 and Germany in 1998. They also know that banning any item from
the Internet has international ramifications, and anything that is banned
from its source cannot be available elsewhere in the world.

            To silence political opposition on the Net, therefore,
dictatorial African governments have investigated using sophisticated
filtering and rating software which is now widely available. Software
devices used to censor objectionable Internet sites now pose the greatest
danger to freedom of expression, and though online human rights networks
condemn their use, they have been effectively utilized throughout North
Africa, especially Tunisia.

            Attempts to silence the Internet in Africa date back to the
early days of the Web. In Zambia, in February 1996, the authorities
threatened to sue Zamnet, the country's main ISP, unless it removed a banned
online edition of The Post newspaper. Though the government succeeded in
making Zamnet remove the online Post from the Net, Zambians could still
obtain it from other service providers outside of the country.

            The late Nigerian dictator Gen. Sani Abacha's attempts to ban
the Internet in 1996 were also met with strong opposition. And in Ethiopia,
attempts to control the Internet through legislation in 1996 were met with
both international and local condemnation.

            In 1997, Internet service providers in Malawi complained about
government attempts to create an Internet monopoly by consolidating Internet
access in a few selected pro-government firms.

            The rural challenge
            Apart from constant threats from the dictators, the greatest
challenge today for the Internet in Africa is to bring low-cost Internet
access to rural areas. The development of an African Information
Superhighway will depend on close cooperation among governments, civil
society and multinational corporations, many of which have long done
business with state-controlled telecommunication organizations — even as
many telecoms were misused by dictators to perpetuate their misrule.

            For Africa to benefit fully from the Internet, the entire
continent must be wired for political, economic, social and cultural
liberation. Low-cost telecommunications services for rural communities
should be the aim of all who are interested in seeing progress on the
African continent.

            Peasants, farmers, doctors, teachers, businessmen, market women,
research workers, engineers and journalists all stand to gain when they have
free and open access to information through the new technologies, which can
be ideal catalysts for economic and social development. Central in achieving
these goals is the political goodwill.

            Journalists have already leapfrogged to the international
communication system through undersea cables, satellites and now the
Internet, and their voices and their reporting are heard by the world.

            But their work will be more meaningful when their voices and
their reporting can also reach the communities, villages and schools
throughout Africa.

            Another possible cause of worry is whether the Internet can be
misused by racists, anti-Semitic groups, tribalists and other hate
campaigners. Some of these groups are already making use of the Net to
spread their hate campaigns. In South Africa, for example, a group that is
considered still sympathetic to the policy of apartheid, the Broederbond,
has had an Internet Web site preaching the doctrine of white supremacy. In
my own country, Kenya, sites operated by black racists call for the
expulsion of Asians.

            Advocates of free expression must also be prepared to discuss
criticism that the Internet could be used and is indeed being used as a
vehicle for such harmful and illegal activities as child pornography,
incitement to tribal hatred, terrorism and even drug trafficking. But in the
end, the Net is a very private medium that is watched by individuals who can
claim the right to their privacy.