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El-ameen Ibrahim

Abuja – African digital rights expert has called for a rights-based framework to guide cybersecurity and information governance across the continent, warning that state control and opaque corporate practices risk eroding civil liberties online.

The call emerged from an academic paper by Nigerian human rights lawyer Obioma Adesewa Okonkwo, highlighting the need to align capacity building with human rights in Africa’s digital transformation.

Okonkwo, who serves as Legal Adviser and Governing Council Member at the Environmental and Economic Resource Centre (EERC) Nigeria, and Head of Legal at Media Rights Agenda (MRA), argued that digital power structures increasingly determine who controls information and who gets silenced.

“Information becomes both a tool of empowerment and an instrument of control,” she wrote, warning that unchecked state surveillance and algorithmic filtering are “reconfiguring the traditional balance between state authority, corporate influence, and individual agency.”

Her research, titled Power Dynamics of Information Control, Censorship, and Digital Transparency shaping human rights discourse in the information society, examined how governments and big tech platforms influence access to information through censorship, data manipulation, and algorithmic opacity.

She restated that transparency and accountability are now as critical to democracy as free speech itself.

“Transparency activism, from leaks to open-data campaigns, has exposed widespread governance failures. Yet, whistleblowers continue to face severe legal and personal consequences. Africa needs stronger legal frameworks to protect those who defend truth and openness,” Okonkwo noted.