USA Africa Dialogue Series - Human rights online and ICT4D - Two sides of the same coin

Until recently, advocates for freedom on the internet have tended to operate in relative isolation from practitioners of ICT for Development. Privacy and open data were the hot topic of the workshop. There is an assumption in the ICTD community that more data is better. Right to information is a socioeconomic right, and thus poses duty on the State to ensure its realisation.

Great lessons can be learned from freedom of information on the internet and open data. We need to be able to answer the question, what’s in it for me? Very few South Africans were interested in this until the government introduced the Secrecy Bill.” The Right2Know campaign has played a role in raising awareness in South Africa, including lobbying mobile operators to provide a certain number of free calls or for certain numbers to be free to call.

International trade agreements that affect national and local policies, such as the TPP which raises standards for copyright, are closing doors to the web we want, to internet rights frameworks and ways that we think about privacy and access to information going into the future.