MediaNama hosted a virtual conference entitled “PrivacyNama 2021. The two-day event, focusing on key themes related to privacy and global data governance, took place on the 6th and 7th of October 2021.
The conference discussed data privacy regulations and the challenges regulators and policymakers face when enforcing such regulations, in addition to the repercussion of those legislations on the openness of the internet.
Both RIA’s executive director, Dr. Alison Gillwald, and Dr. Andrew Rens RIA’s senior research fellow participated in the conference discussing current data privacy policies and frameworks, and the impact of those frameworks on the African continent. Alison argued that despite the progress made at a continental level in developing data governance frameworks that are aligned to international agreements the actual ratification of them and domestication of them was very limited. She cited the African Union Convention on Cybersecurity and Data Protection (Malabo) that was adopted by member states as far back as 2018, that had still not come into force as it had not yet been ratified by the threshold of 15 countries.
Dr Rens warned again data exploitation saying: “Exploiting data can cause people to lose trust in the data ecosystem and in return they will refuse to give data and give inaccurate data, further clarifying this position via twitter “A government that wants to centralise and amass data has to then keep it current, accurate and fend off hackers, thus data is not inherently valuable and can be a liability.
Watch the discussion with global South data fundi’s Luca Belli, Head, CyberBRICS Project, FGV Alexa Lee, Senior Manager – Global Policy, ITI Council; Alison Gillwald, Andrew Rens, Senior Research Fellow, RIA and Udbhav Tiwari, Mozilla Public Policy Advisor.
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