Akinremi Peter Taiwo

The session seeks to identify the barriers to greater digital inclusion and recommend ways of overcoming these obstacles towards empowering Africans with the transforming power of ICTs. Tope Ogundipe, the Director of Programs with Paradigm Initiative moderated the session. She reflected on the 21% internet penetration in Africa, a figure that reflects the underdevelopment on a continent with a population of around 1.2billion. On the panel were Chioma Agwuegbo from CC Consulting Services (Nigeria), Akinremi Peter Taiwo, a West Africa Coordinator of African Civil Society (Nigeria), Olajumoke Adekeye, a statistician (Nigeria) and Poncelet Ileleji from The Gambia. Chioma, the first speaker listed three key factors that must be met before access would become a priority for the human kind which are Food, Shelter and Clothing. She further looked at how poverty has handicap many Africans in the area of affordability of computers and internet access. Peter, who was the second speaker ...

How does good cybersecurity contribute to the growth of and trust in ICTs and Internet Technologies, and their ability to support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? The rapid growth and adoption of ICTs as a key driver of the economic development would be jeopardized if measures to protect connected devices and user generated data is absent. The fear of data compromising, information theft, privacy intrusion, surveillance, unreliable software programs and applications would not allow those unconnected billion people to fully rely on the use of the internet and its related technologies therefore distant the realization of sustainable development goals. The emergency of internet, penetration and its usage was given highest consideration with less attention to its security issues. Less attention to protecting the information and communication technologies and internet technologies would lead to high rate of disadvantages over the benefits.   Abuse of the use of technolo...

9 TH WEST AFRICAN INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM, JULY 27 TH AND 28 TH , 2017, COTONOU, BENIN: Digital security for socioeconomic   development and peace in West Africa The 9 th West African Internet Governance Forum was held at Golden Tulip diplomat in Cotonou, Benin. The two (2) day event attracted stakeholders across the nations for dialog on digital security for socioeconomic development. The event recorded 418 participants with full house at the closing session The conference was opened by stakeholders with beautiful welcome addresses. But the opening remarks were made by the Minister for Ministry of Digital Economy and Commission (MENC), Benin. The conference also witnessed the report from the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) countries’ representatives such as Nigeria, Benin, Chad, Gambia, Togo, Niger, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, etc. Sessions on Security, Openness and Privacy was moderated by Jacques Houngbo, FGI Bénin. Jacques gave a brief importance of security in...

DECLARATION OF THE NGO (NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION) ALACO ON THE OCCASION OF THE INTERNATIONAL DAY OF FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION. December 09th, 2016 On Friday, December 09th, 2016, United Nations decided to mark a symbolic stop to say NO to the corruption which acts in a fatal way on the development. The fight against corruption which constitutes an important criterion of the good governance managed to be taken into account as a major concern of the government at the international level. Since the institution from this international day of fight against corruption to this day, we are entitled to wonder if the pursued objectives were reached affected. To answer this interrogation on the occasion of this contribution seems to us conceited. However, one has to recognize that the corruption continues to go on the rampage in our countries. The governance of our states is strongly altered by the problems of admissibility, failure to respect the established rules and the often disputed elec...

AT&T IS SELLING YOUR DATA TO POLICE T he Daily Beast recently revealed new details on AT&T’s intimate relationship with law enforcement agencies. Under a program called Hemisphere, they sell analysis of your private call detail records to law enforcement agencies. You don’t even have to be an AT&T customer or live in the U.S. to have your details included, and they will try to track you down if you change numbers. Because Hemisphere threatens your privacy, AT&T has tried to keep the program a secret. Coincidentally, AT&T told us this past summer they “rarely receive complaints that company operations have negatively affected users’ freedom of expression or privacy rights.” This is a chance to let AT&T know how how you feel about their disregard for your privacy. We have created a form to empower you to take complaints directly to AT&T. We have some suggested language, but please edit it as you see fit.Don’t let AT&T pretend we don’t car...

Sometimes I get into one of those conversations about the Internet where the only way I can reply is to quote from The IT Crowd: "Are you from the past?" I say that every time someone asserts that the online world is somehow separate from real life. You'd be surprised how much this comes up, even after all these years of people's digital shenanigans leading to everything from espionage and murder to international video fame and fancy book deals. But now that the U.S. has a president-elect who communicates with the American people almost exclusively via Twitter and YouTube, it's really time to stop kidding ourselves. Before the election, many of us (including me) would have shrugged off the fake news stories piling up in the margins of our Facebook feeds. Nobody takes that stuff seriously, right? The election of Donald Trump and several recent tweets from the House Science Committee are two strong pieces of evidence that, yes, people do. In reality, politics h...

One way of working out if the data you’re gathering is particularly sensitive is to do a thought experiment: what would happen if this data got into the hands of a malicious actor? Who would be keen to get their hands on it? What are the worst things that they could do with this data? Sometimes, though, it can be hard to put yourself in the shoes of your enemies, or to envision potential future actions. As a result, practising  data minimisation  is a keystone of a rights-based,  responsible data  approach. And sadly, it’s the opposite of the approach we’re seeing governments around the world take. Last week, the UK Government passed what has been described by Jim Killock, director of the  Open Rights Group , as the  “most extreme mass surveillance law ever passed in a democracy” . The law, known officially as the  Investigatory Powers Act , forces UK internet providers to store browsing histories — including domains visited — for one year, in cas...