German Chancellor Scholz Kicks off Africa Trip in Senegal

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dakar, sene­gal — 
Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Olaf Scholz said his coun­try is inter­est­ed in a major gas exploita­tion project in Sene­gal as he began a three-nation vis­it to Africa on Sun­day that also is focused on the geopo­lit­i­cal con­se­quences of the war in Ukraine.
Sene­gal is believed to have sig­nif­i­cant deposits of nat­ur­al gas along its bor­der with Mau­ri­ta­nia at a time when Ger­many and oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries are try­ing to reduce their depen­dence on import­ing Russ­ian gas.
“We have begun exchanges and we will con­tin­ue our efforts at the lev­el of experts because it is our wish to achieve progress,” Scholz said at a joint news brief­ing with Sene­galese Pres­i­dent Macky Sall.
The gas project off the coast of Sene­gal is being led by BP, and the first bar­rels are not expect­ed until next year.
This week’s trip marks Scholz’s first to Africa since becom­ing chan­cel­lor near­ly six months ago. Two of the coun­tries he is vis­it­ing — Sene­gal and South Africa — have been invit­ed to attend the Group of 7 sum­mit in Ger­many at the end of June.
Par­tic­i­pants there will try to find a com­mon posi­tion toward Rus­sia, which was kicked out of the then-Group of Eight fol­low­ing its 2014 seizure of Crimea from Ukraine.
Lead­ers at the G‑7 sum­mit also will be address­ing the threat of cli­mate change. Sev­er­al G‑7 coun­tries, includ­ing Ger­many and the Unit­ed States, signed a ‘just ener­gy tran­si­tion part­ner­ship’ with South Africa last year to help the coun­try wean itself off heav­i­ly pol­lut­ing coal.
A sim­i­lar agree­ment is in the works with Sene­gal, where Ger­many has sup­port­ed the con­struc­tion of a solar farm.
Ger­man offi­cials also said Scholz will make a stop in Niger, a coun­try that like its neigh­bors has long been bat­tling Islam­ic extremists.
Ear­li­er this month, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment backed a plan to move hun­dreds of its sol­diers to Niger from neigh­bor­ing Mali. The devel­op­ment comes amid a deep­en­ing polit­i­cal cri­sis in Mali that prompt­ed for­mer colo­nial pow­er France to announce it was with­draw­ing its troops after nine years of help­ing Mali bat­tle insurgents.
Ger­many offi­cials say their deci­sion also was moti­vat­ed by con­cerns that Malian forces receiv­ing EU train­ing could coop­er­ate with Russ­ian mer­ce­nar­ies now oper­at­ing in the country.
Ger­many, though, will increase its par­tic­i­pa­tion in a U.N. peace­keep­ing mis­sion in Mali, pro­vid­ing up to 1,400 sol­diers. The Cabinet’s deci­sions still need to be approved by parliament.
Niger is also a major tran­sit hub for ille­gal migra­tion to Europe. Peo­ple from across West Africa con­nect with smug­glers there to make the jour­ney north­ward to attempt the dan­ger­ous trip across the Mediter­ranean Sea.

How currency sanctions on Russia could disrupt trade with Africa

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https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/shutterstock_1042017103_small.jpg?w=272 Intro­duc­tion Finan­cial sanc­tions tend to hurt both the sanc­tioned and the sanc­tion­er, but they also threat­en to hurt coun­tries that are finan­cial­ly inter­linked with the sanc­tioned coun­try. Recent sanc­tions levied on Rus­sia by the Unit­ed States and the Euro­pean Union in response to Russia’s inva­sion of Ukraine are dis­rupt­ing glob­al trade and finan­cial networks…

Chad: Hundreds stage anti-French Protest In N’djamena | Africanews

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Hun­dreds of Cha­di­ans joined anti-French protests called by the oppo­si­tion coali­tion Wak­it Tama on Sat­ur­day, May 14.
Pro­test­ers oppose France’s mil­i­tary pres­ence in the coun­try and sup­port for tran­si­tion­al Pres­i­dent Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, who has been in pow­er since his father’s death in 2021.
They report­ed­ly attacked “sym­bols” of their for­mer colo­nial pow­er, includ­ing sev­er­al Total petrol stations.

The protest was main­ly attend­ed by stu­dents with many on moto­cy­cles and chant­i­ng “France get out”.
**“Now France is med­dling in pol­i­tics, we don’t know, now the whole Cha­di­an ter­ri­to­ry is occu­pied by the French army. The French army is con­cerned with the wealth of Chad’s sub­soil and not with the well-being of the Cha­di­an people.”**Souleyman Tahir, Protester
For­mer pres­i­dent, Idriss Déby Itno, head­ed an author­i­tar­i­an regime for 30 years and was killed in bat­tle on April 20, 2021, dur­ing a rebel­lion in the north of the country.
Cha­di­an police fired tear gas and used water canon to dis­perse hun­dreds of pro­test­ers who took to the streets of the cap­i­tal and oth­er towns in an anti-French protest that saw the destruc­tion of some French-linked businesses.
The protest was called by Cha­di­an civ­il soci­ety coali­tion Wak­it Tam­ma to denounce France’s back­ing of the Tran­si­tion­al Mil­i­tary Coun­cil that seized pow­er fol­low­ing the bat­tle­field death of Pres­i­dent Idriss Deby in April 2021, a spokesman said.
As France’s influ­ence wanes in its for­mer colonies, recent protests in coun­tries such as Mali, Burk­i­na Faso and Niger have seen calls for increased mil­i­tary ties with Rus­sia instead of France.

Ethiopia revokes accreditation of The Economist reporter — The East African

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By TESFA-ALEM TEKLE

Ethiopi­an author­i­ties on Fri­day revoked the press cre­den­tials of a for­eign jour­nal­ist who had been work­ing for The Econ­o­mist in the Horn of Africa nation.In a let­ter issued Fri­day after­noon and seen by The East­African, the Ethiopi­an Media Author­i­ty (EMA) said it has can­celled media accred­i­ta­tion of Tom Gard­ner, cit­ing fail­ure to main­tain pro­fes­sion­al ethics and vio­la­tions of the coun­try’s laws and reg­u­la­tions. It did not gave details of the allegations.“As a pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ist accred­it­ed to work in Ethiopia, you know very well that the con­di­tion of your per­mit is depen­dent on your strict obser­va­tion of pro­fes­sion­al ethics and the rules and the reg­u­la­tions of the coun­try,” it said.“This let­ter is writ­ten to inform you that your accred­i­ta­tion is revoked effec­tive imme­di­ate­ly, and you are no longer allowed to work as a jour­nal­ist in Ethiopia.”EMA said that pri­or to the deci­sion, the author­i­ty had sev­er­al dis­cus­sions with the journalist.However, the author­i­ty alleged that Mr Gard­ner failed to live to stan­dards of con­duct for journalists. 

Adver­tise­ment

“Despite our repeat­ed dis­cus­sions, ver­bal warn­ings and writ­ten rep­ri­mands, you have not shown the will­ing­ness to cor­rect your mis­tak­en approach,” the let­ter said.It, how­ev­er, said The Econ­o­mist is wel­come to appoint an “unbi­ased and inde­pen­dent” jour­nal­ist to replace Mr Gardner.A few weeks ago, EMA had issued a warn­ing let­ter to the jour­nal­ist after he post­ed on his pri­vate social media that Prime Min­is­ter Abiy Ahmed and TPLF rebel leader Debre Zion Gebre-Michael had a tele­phone conversation.Authorities warned him to be care­ful about his report­ing, espe­cial­ly on sto­ries that could affect nation­al interest.Since the Tigray con­flict broke out in Novem­ber 2020, the Ethiopi­an gov­ern­ment has been crit­i­cised for cre­at­ing a dif­fi­cult envi­ron­ment for jour­nal­ists and dissidents.Journalists have also com­plained that they have been denied access to war zones where right vio­la­tions, includ­ing mas­sacres, rapes, and oth­er seri­ous crimes, have been reported.The Ethiopi­an gov­ern­ment led by PM Abiy Ahmed, a 2019 Noble Peace Prize win­ner, has been crit­i­cised by sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al right groups for using the state of emer­gency as a tool to arbi­trar­i­ly detain sev­er­al jour­nal­ists to sti­fle crit­i­cal report­ing and to silence war zone news coverage.The Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists’ (CPJ) 2021 prison cen­sus ranked Ethiopia as sub-Saha­ran Africa’s sec­ond-worst jail­er of journalists.“We are very con­cerned. This devel­op­ment is the lat­est sign of Ethiopi­a’s dete­ri­o­rat­ing press free­dom envi­ron­ment,” CPJ’s Africa Pro­gram Coor­di­na­tor, Angela Quin­tal, told The East­African on Friday.Since the con­flict in Tigray erupt­ed, sev­er­al Ethiopi­an jour­nal­ists and trans­la­tors work­ing for a range of inter­na­tion­al media organisation—including to AFP, Nation Media Group, Reuters, the BBC and the Finan­cial Times—have been detained while doing their jobs.Last year Ethiopi­an author­i­ties also revoked press accred­i­ta­tion of a New York Times reporter.

For Macron’s Second Term — a Lower Profile in Africa?

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https://gdb.voanews.com/d5132b83-13f7-4346-bd6c-dcc6657d0391_w800_h450.jpgParis —  Five years ago, France’s Emmanuel Macron saw big when it came to Africa. Days after his pres­i­den­tial inau­gu­ra­tion, he flew to north­east­ern Mali, meet­ing with French troops and vow­ing, along­side his Malian coun­ter­part, Ibrahim Boubacar Keï­ta, to wage an “uncom­pro­mis­ing fight” against Islamist ter­ror­ism. A few months lat­er in anoth­er Sahel coun­try, nearby…

Agenda 2063: Education in Africa, a key to success, By Rahma O. Oladosu — Premium Times Nigeria

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I believe one of the eas­i­est ways to push this Agen­da for­ward is through edu­ca­tion. Africa acknowl­edges the fact that social and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment is not pos­si­ble with­out sub­stan­tive invest­ment in edu­ca­tion and research, espe­cial­ly at the ter­tiary level.

Over time, it has become imper­a­tive for Africa to map out a strat­e­gy of region­al coop­er­a­tion and inte­gra­tion and lay the foun­da­tion for sus­tain­able devel­op­ment. The estab­lish­ment of the African Union (replac­ing the Organ­i­sa­tion of African Uni­ty) has been a step in that direc­tion. The Union aims at achiev­ing greater uni­ty and sol­i­dar­i­ty and accel­er­at­ing the polit­i­cal and socio-eco­nom­ic inte­gra­tion of the continent.

In great efforts by the African Union to accom­plish what it has set out to achieve in mak­ing the con­ti­nent a bet­ter one, AGENDA 2063 was introduced.

Now, what exact­ly is agen­da 2063?

Agen­da 2063 is Africa’s blue­print and mas­ter plan for trans­form­ing the con­ti­nent into the glob­al pow­er­house of the future. It is said to be the continent’s strate­gic frame­work that aims to deliv­er on its goal for inclu­sive and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment and it is a con­crete man­i­fes­ta­tion of the pan-African dri­ve for uni­ty, self-deter­mi­na­tion, free­dom, progress and col­lec­tive pros­per­i­ty, pur­sued under Pan-African­ism and towards African Renais­sance. Agen­da 2063 encap­su­lates not only Africa’s Aspi­ra­tions for the Future but also iden­ti­fies key Flag­ship Pro­grammes which can boost the continent’s eco­nom­ic growth and devel­op­ment, and lead to the rapid trans­for­ma­tion of the con­ti­nent. It also iden­ti­fies key activ­i­ties to be under­tak­en in its 10-year Imple­men­ta­tion Plan, which will ensure that Agen­da 2063 deliv­ers both quan­ti­ta­tive and qual­i­ta­tive trans­for­ma­tion­al out­comes for Africans.

I believe one of the eas­i­est ways to push this Agen­da for­ward is through edu­ca­tion. Africa acknowl­edges the fact that social and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment is not pos­si­ble with­out sub­stan­tive invest­ment in edu­ca­tion and research, espe­cial­ly at the ter­tiary level.

Get­ting an edu­ca­tion is not just a fun­da­men­tal human right, It is piv­otal to increas­ing employ­ment and income oppor­tu­ni­ties. It is fun­da­men­tal to break­ing the cycle of pover­ty. Edu­ca­tion is the key to unlock­ing the gold­en door of free­dom for all in Africa. It is the bedrock of social and eco­nom­ic development.

Edu­ca­tion is cru­cial as it is an invest­ment in human cap­i­tal. This yields tremen­dous ben­e­fits on many lev­els and spheres. It ben­e­fits the indi­vid­ual, fam­i­ly com­mu­ni­ty, and nation. Edu­ca­tion is a sus­tain­able means of alle­vi­at­ing pover­ty and bring last­ing change.

Con­se­quent­ly, to effect per­ma­nent change, any effort to bring last­ing change must include edu­ca­tion, in one way or the other.

Recent­ly, the exec­u­tive sec­re­tary of the Ter­tiary Edu­ca­tion Trust Fund (TET­Fund), Archi­tect Son­ny Echono, played host to a team from the African Union Com­mis­sion for Edu­ca­tion, led by Pro­fes­sor Mohammed Bel­hocine, the com­mis­sion­er for edu­ca­tion who came to the Fund on an impact­ful cour­tesy vis­it, which I was priv­i­leged to witness.

The Fund, gen­er­al­ly known for pro­vid­ing sup­port for research and devel­op­ment in ter­tiary insti­tu­tions in Nige­ria, revealed its readi­ness, through its man­age­ment, to forge a part­ner­ship with the Pan African Uni­ver­si­ty to push the African Union agen­da for­ward. Arc. Echono fur­ther said that the Niger­ian gov­ern­ment is actu­al­ly think­ing in the direc­tion of pro­mot­ing tech­nol­o­gy and is in the process of estab­lish­ing a nation­al insti­tute in Abu­ja, which will be a post-grad­u­ate insti­tu­tion for the pro­mo­tion of the tech­no­log­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion of the country.

I per­son­al­ly think this would be a plus for the edu­ca­tion sec­tor in Nige­ria, con­sid­er­ing the fact that there hasn’t been much atten­tion giv­en to tech­nol­o­gy in most of our ter­tiary insti­tu­tions recently.

The Pan African Uni­ver­si­ty (PAU) is the cul­mi­na­tion of con­ti­nen­tal ini­tia­tives of the African Union Com­mis­sion to revi­talise high­er edu­ca­tion and research on the con­ti­nent. Accord­ing to the African Union, the PAU will great­ly boost the pop­u­la­tion and reten­tion of high-lev­el human resources, along­side qual­i­ty knowl­edge out­puts and will attract the best intel­lec­tu­al capac­i­ty from all over the world.

For­tu­nate­ly, the Pan African Uni­ver­si­ty part­ner­ship with TET­Fund will most def­i­nite­ly yield pos­i­tive results with the lat­ter pro­vid­ing tremen­dous sup­port in terms of the con­struc­tion of more class­rooms, pro­cure­ment of lab­o­ra­to­ry equip­ment and all oth­er basic infra­struc­ture need­ed. This major devel­op­ment will pro­vide a con­ducive envi­ron­ment and enable stu­dent researchers to learn one or two things to attract val­ue. It will also be a huge oppor­tu­ni­ty for schol­ars to troop to the university.

With this, the goals of the African Union is being geared towards the right direc­tion with edu­ca­tion as an ear­ly foun­da­tion, encour­ag­ing research through the Pan African Uni­ver­si­ty and bring­ing young Africans togeth­er to study and con­duct research for about three to five years, and in the process they get to know each oth­er bet­ter in terms of their cul­tures, lan­guages and beliefs. And this will cre­ate the real momen­tum for Pan African­ism, and a step towards real­is­ing Agen­da 2063.

Rah­ma Olamide Ola­do­su writes from Wuye Dis­trict, Abuja.

South Africa’s latest surge is a possible preview of the pandemic’s next chapter.

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https://static01.nyt.com/images/2022/04/29/multimedia/29virus-briefing-south-africa/29virus-briefing-south-africa-moth.jpg Coro­n­avirus cas­es are surg­ing again in South Africa, and pub­lic health experts are mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion, eager to know what’s dri­ving the spike, what it says about immu­ni­ty from pre­vi­ous infec­tions and what its impli­ca­tions are glob­al­ly. South Africa expe­ri­enced a decline in cas­es after hit­ting an Omi­cron-fueled, pan­dem­ic peak in Decem­ber. But in…

West Africa moves in unison to promote vaccination and curb falsehoods — Poynter

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In West Africa, fact-check­­ers are coop­er­at­ing to expand their influ­ence on local, nation­al and inter­na­tion­al lev­els to curb mis­in­for­ma­tion about vac­cines. Orga­ni­za­tions are band­ing togeth­er, form­ing alliances with inter­gov­ern­men­tal groups and cre­at­ing cross-con­ti­­nent task forces to ele­vate health knowl­edge across Africa. “I think the most impor­tant thing is to high­light how fact-check­­ers lever­age col­lab­o­ra­tion to…

Why African Leaders Won’t Back the West on Ukraine

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https://foreignpolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Cyril-Ramaphosa-GettyImages-1238570900.jpgWel­come 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,…

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

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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.