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Why African Leaders Won’t Back the West on Ukraine

Wel­come to For­eign Pol­i­cy’s Africa Brief. The high­lights this week: The Unit­ed States calls for an inves­ti­ga­tion into atroc­i­ties in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, Gam­bia’s oppo­si­tion par­ty los­es its major­i­ty in elec­tions, and the tri­al of South Africa’s Jacob Zuma is delayed again. If you would like to receive Africa Brief in your inbox every Wednesday,…

Five trends to expect in Africa for the rest of 2022

Ryan Short, a part­ner at Gen­e­sis Ana­lyt­ics, explores five trends to look for in Africa’s busi­ness world for the rest of the year 2022. He touch­es on achiev­ing “net zero” in green­house gas emis­sions, ESG and impact, the EU’s green tax­on­o­my, and more. He con­cludes giv­ing some advice to African nego­tia­tors ahead of the COP27…

What’s in a name? Experimental evidence of the coup taboo

ABSTRACT Lead­ers of mil­i­tary coups rou­tine­ly deny that their actions amount to a coup, often labelling them as rev­o­lu­tions or even con­sti­tu­tion­al suc­ces­sions. These attempts to mud­dy the waters occa­sion­al­ly suc­ceed in prompt­ing dis­cus­sions over whether the military’s actions tru­ly amount to a coup. But does the label mat­ter? Does pub­lic sup­port for mil­i­tary intervention…

Why Nigeria and other African countries are blocking cellphones | Fin24 — News24

This week, Nige­ria blocked mil­lions of its cit­i­zens — who haven’t linked their lines to their ID num­bers — from mak­ing phone calls.Other gov­ern­ment also want cit­i­zens to reg­is­ter their phones.But there’s a dis­trust by res­i­dents to hand over their details to the government.This Mon­day, mil­lions of Nige­ri­ans woke up to find that they
had been barred from mak­ing phone calls. The num­ber of dis­con­nect­ed lines is
report­ed to be as many as 75 mil­lion, more than a third of the total 198
mil­lion lines nationwide.But the move has been a long time coming.In Decem­ber 2020, Abu­ja issued a direc­tive for all SIM card
car­ri­ers to link their lines to a unique Nation­al Iden­ti­ty Num­ber, cit­ing a
need to tack­le the plagu­ing inse­cu­ri­ty in the country.That dead­line was post­poned numer­ous times but last week’s
attack on a train by armed groups was a wake-up call. When reports started
sur­fac­ing online that the attack­ers had start­ed call­ing fam­i­lies of abducted
pas­sen­gers for ran­som, the gov­ern­ment swung into action, ful­fill­ing its almost two-year-old
promise to cut off non-com­pli­ant citizens.On social net­works, many – espe­cial­ly south­ern­ers – are
debat­ing the con­nec­tion between SIM card link­age with the nation­al identity
num­ber and the actions of these groups, known local­ly as ban­dits, whose axes of
focus are swaths of the north­west and cen­tral Nigeria.In 2015, the Niger­ian gov­ern­ment fined MTN,
one of the continent’s biggest tele­com play­ers, US$5.2bn for default­ing in
cut­ting off unver­i­fied customers.The Nation­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion (NCC) had previously
instruct­ed the tele­com giant to deac­ti­vate between 10 and 18.6 million
lines. But gov­ern­ment swung into action after the high-pro­file kid­nap of a
for­mer Niger­ian finance min­is­ter; police say the kid­nap­pers used MTN lines to
con­tact his fam­i­ly members.ALSO READ | MTN must ver­i­fy users in Nige­ria by
year end or face blocked SIM card­sAcross the con­ti­nent, there is a length­en­ing line of
gov­ern­ments embark­ing on a mass dis­con­nec­tion dri­ve cit­ing, among oth­er things,
domes­tic secu­ri­ty. In March, Zam­bia announced it had deac­ti­vat­ed two million
SIMs cards to stem the vol­ume of fraud car­ried out using mobile lines.Kenyan media have also report­ed an April 15 dead­line by
author­i­ties in the East African coun­try for the deac­ti­va­tion of unregistered
SIM cards – the third such dead­line in the past 10 years. In 2013, it switched
off more than two mil­lion SIM cards after an attck by the armed group
al-Shabab.Last year, Tan­za­nia said it had blocked 18,000 SIM cards
involved in crim­i­nal activ­i­ties. In a bid to also cur­tail mobile scams, Ghana
issued a direc­tive for every SIM card car­ri­er to re-reg­is­ter their SIMs with
the Ghana Card, the nation­al res­i­den­cy card, or lose them.In far­away Hong Kong, a pro­pos­al from last year to
impose new restric­tions on phone line reg­is­tra­tions was approved this March.What are the issues?With Africa hav­ing a 44% mobile pen­e­tra­tion rate, SIM cards
are one of the most ubiq­ui­tous tech­nolo­gies around.At least 50 of Africa’s 54 coun­tries have manda­to­ry SIM
reg­is­tra­tion laws in place, but most have bare­ly been enforced – until now.
Reg­is­tra­tion usu­al­ly involves the sub­mis­sion of per­son­al data and the capture
of cit­i­zen biometrics.The ratio­nale is that this reg­is­tra­tion will help cre­ate a
vast data­base to help track crim­i­nal activ­i­ty. Offi­cials say SIMs, accessible
even on the streets for some­times as low as US$1 (~R14), are fre­quent­ly bought
and dis­card­ed by sus­pect­ed crim­i­nals, with­out any – or not enough – details of
their per­son­al iden­ti­ty to trace and mon­i­tor them.“Since 9/11, in many coun­tries, if you want to get a
SIM card, you have to show some [form of] iden­ti­fi­ca­tion,” Rebecca
Enon­chong, Cameroon­ian tech entre­pre­neur and founder of App­sTech told Al
Jazeera. “It is rather nor­mal that the gov­ern­ment should require those who
are using cell ser­vices [to] reg­is­ter with the oper­a­tors and the
telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion com­pa­nies should know who is con­nect­ed to their
services.“YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE| OPINION | Yes, the reg­u­la­tor wants
mobile oper­a­tors like Voda­com and MTN to store your bio­met­ric­sOn the sur­face, this sounds like a quick and cheap solution
for many gov­ern­ments in a con­ti­nent where most coun­tries have no unified
oper­a­tional nation­al database.But mul­ti­ple SIM own­er­ship is preva­lent across Africa for
many rea­sons includ­ing vary­ing data prices, con­nec­tiv­i­ty speeds and signal
strength. In 2018, four African coun­tries were among the top 10 glob­al­ly, with
dual or mul­ti-SIM mobile phones. Kenya even once had plans to insti­tute an
own­er­ship cap of 10 SIM cards per per­son. Tele­com oper­a­tors also often tailor
reg­is­tra­tion process­es in order to sell more pre­paid SIM cards.Experts say the out­come is that the data gleaned from SIM
reg­is­tra­tions are not as accu­rate or neat as they ought to be.“The ID sys­tems [in Africa] are not real­ly backed by
tech­nol­o­gy, there are no link­ages, so there is no ver­i­fi­ca­tion process,”
Enon­chong said. “If the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion com­pa­nies them­selves don’t
enforce that, it is real­ly very hard for the gov­ern­ment to make use of the
data.“How did we get here?At the root of it all is a mass unwill­ing­ness to register
SIM cards due to a seem­ing lack of dis­trust by res­i­dents to hand over their
details to the government.Unsurprisingly, there are con­cerns about data pri­va­cy and
the ines­timable capac­i­ty of gov­ern­ment to use data col­lect­ed for one purpose
for anoth­er, giv­en the his­tor­i­cal intol­er­ance for dis­sent in some of these
countries.There is also a legal void around gov­ern­ment han­dling of
data.A 2021 report by Col­lab­o­ra­tion on Inter­na­tion­al ICT Policy
for East and South­ern Africa (CIPESA), claimed that only half of African
coun­tries have adopt­ed laws to pro­tect per­son­al data.Repeated reg­is­tra­tion exer­cis­es have also weak­ened the will
of the peo­ple, experts say.Over the years, Nige­ria, Africa’s most pop­u­lous coun­try and
its eco­nom­ic pow­er­house, has insti­tut­ed mul­ti­ple manda­to­ry identity
reg­is­tra­tion schemes, includ­ing Bank Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Num­ber (BVN) and National
Iden­ti­ty Num­ber (NIN), along­side more wide­spread IDs like vot­ers’ cards,
inter­na­tion­al pass­ports and others.Yet, the gov­ern­ment is insist­ing that the way for­ward is for
every SIM card to be linked with an NIN, a pol­i­cy that many Nige­ri­ans say will
be just as cum­ber­some and bureau­crat­ic as its pre­de­ces­sors – and pos­si­bly end
up achiev­ing noth­ing too.“This is a trend of pol­i­cy lazi­ness,” Gbenga
Sesan, head of Lagos-based dig­i­tal rights advo­ca­cy non­prof­it Par­a­digm Initiative,
told Al Jazeera. “The prob­lem does not lie with the lack of a central
data­base; it is about impuni­ty. If I know that if I com­mit a crime and I know I
would be pun­ished for it, then I will like­ly think about it twice.“In Kenya, cit­i­zens are also com­plain­ing about the redundancy
of mul­ti­ple reg­is­tra­tions. The new reg­is­tra­tion war­rants the sub­mis­sion of the
phone num­ber, copy of pass­port or visa and bio­da­ta page, exit stamps and
scanned ID – items they claim to have sub­mit­ted dur­ing the last exer­cise in 2018.The big­ger fear, how­ev­er, is of gov­ern­ment surveillance
under the guise of nation­al secu­ri­ty, lead­ing to a wide­spread reluc­tance to
will­ing­ly sub­mit per­son­al data which can be used to mon­i­tor their everyday
activities.“The issue of data pri­va­cy tran­scends Africa,” Ken
Ashig­bey, the CEO of Ghana Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Cham­ber, not­ed. “The concern
about Big Broth­er sit­ting some­where and using your data to spy on you is always
going to be there, [and] when you bring it into the exam­ples of Africa where
our gov­ern­ments all seem to have total pow­er, def­i­nite­ly there are risks,”
he said.The risks also extend to small and medi­um-scale enterprises
(SMEs) in a dig­i­tal era where SIMs and the world of pos­si­bil­i­ties on the
inter­net are help­ing empow­er many in the absence of social wel­fare schemes.Already, SMEs account for 84% of employ­ment and make up 96%
of busi­ness­es in Nige­ria. Shut­ting mil­lions of peo­ple out of seamless
com­mu­ni­ca­tion could adverse­ly affect the econ­o­my, Sesan warned.“What we are going to lose is rough­ly one-third or
about 35% of con­nect­ed lines that we have [and] there will be major economic
con­se­quences [but] there will be no gain in terms of secu­ri­ty,” he said. Go to the Fin24 front page.Go to the Fin24 front page.