By Doh James Sonkey
The Executive Director of Paradigm Initiative, Gbenga Sesan has announced that the Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum will hold in Lusaka, Zambia from April 29 to May 1, 2025. Revealing to journalists and civil society actors at a Digital Rights Academy workshop in Yaounde last April 14, 2025, Gbenga Sesan said the event is one of the largest gatherings for digital rights and inclusion on the continent. He said the gathering was in Ghana last year, while Kenya played host to it before that.
The Executive Director of Paradigm Initiative also added that ‘‘next year we will be going to a Francophone African country that we will announce later in the month. So, these are some of the opportunities that we provide apart from our digital inclusion work, which is basically training for young people, at-risk young people. So young people who would otherwise not have had opportunities for digital skills, we work on a life legacy programme to train them, and that is happening across 13 countries on the continent.’’
He castigated ‘‘governments who instead of fulfilling their obligations to uphold rights, some of them are actively working against it, including setting up new laws that actually violate the rights of citizens. A very simple example is that citizens should have access to the internet, citizens should have access to express themselves freely, but a lot of governments are starting new laws that claim to address hate speech or fake news that actually curtail the rights of citizens. Governments want to have a flourishing digital economy, but at the same time they don’t want to pay the price for the respect of rights.’’
Gbenga Sesan continued that ‘‘we call it a resilience, but I think it’s more of the silence of citizens. So, citizens are so used to violations that they find ways around it, instead of pushing back, instead of seeking redress, citizens sort of say, okay we’re resilient, let’s just manage, let’s manage it like that or let’s sort of get used to it.’’
He concluded that ‘‘our research output is called LONDA. LONDA is a Zulu word that means to protect.
26 African countries were featured in the last report, including Cameroon, and what that report does is that it speaks to the exact state of digital rights and inclusion in each country. In addition, we have IETA, which is a Yoruba word that means bulletproof, A-Y-E-T-A. IETA. Africa is a platform that provides digital security training and a toolkit for the media, for civil society, for activists and other actors who need to protect themselves online. And also, we have Repoti, R-I-P-O-T-I, which is a Swahili word that means to report.’’