The Executive Director of Media Rights Agenda (MRA), Mr. Edetaen Ojo, has called on African governments to invest in ensuring access to the Internet for all their citizens in order to close the multi-faceted digital divide, which has exacerbated the continent’s underdevelopment.

Speaking at a workshop jointly organized by the National Cyber Security Centre of Ghana and the Freedom Online Coalition (FOC), as part of activities earmarked for Ghana’s National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM), Mr. Ojo urged African leaders to overcome their current fear of their citizens using social media and other digital platforms to criticize them, as it is a desirable part of governance which enhances democratic participation and gives legitimacy to governments.

Mr. Ojo spoke on “Digital Inclusion and Unequal Access” on behalf of the FOC Advisory Network (FOC-AN), a 30-member body with civil society and private sector actors from all over the world, established as a mechanism to ensure ongoing multi-stakeholder engagement by regularly providing advice to and engaging with FOC governments.

He spoke alongside Hon. Samuel Nartey George, a member of the Ghanaian Parliament and its Select Committee on Communications; Mr. Victor Asante of the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications; Ms. SwantjeMaecker of the Federal Foreign Office of Germany; and Ms. Vivian Affoah, Programme Manager at the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) in Accra.

The workshop on “Digital Inclusion in the Era of COVID-19”, was moderated by Ms. MinnaPenttila of the FOC Support Unit (secretariat) in London, in the United Kingdom, while opening remarks were delivered by Dr. Albert Antwi-Boasiako, the National Cybersecurity Advisor to the President of Ghana.

Mr. Ojo noted that there a  lack of or inadequate appreciation of the negative implications of unequal access for those who do not have access or whose quality of access is so poor that they cannot do much with it.

He said:  “Unequal access has far reaching negative implications and consequences for those who are excluded, not just in terms of the quality of lives that they have, but also in terms of their livelihoods and political participation, among others ways.  In normal times, these inequalities are bad enough, but in the context of COVID-19, they have simply become unacceptable because not only have they created classes of citizens or human beings, but in societies and contexts where these classes already existed, these divisions and inequalities have become magnified with significant numbers of citizens completely left behind and deprived of services, the ability to participate in the political and economic activities of the their societies, unable to benefit from or take part in social activities.”

According to him, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has experienced partial to total lockdowns almost everywhere and during the period, more than ever before in human history, a number of basic activities moved from the offline world to the online environment with the result that “life moved online and many people have basically been living their lives online.”

Observing that only those who have Internet access and the capacity to operate in the online environment have been to live such lives, Mr. Ojo argued that “For those who do not have access or are unable to operate in this environment, although they are still alive, their lives appear to have come to a stop!  For the most part, they cannot function in any meaningful way in the digital world.”

Giving examples of how COVID-19 and the digital divide have exacerbated underdevelopment and the lack of meaningful existence for those who without access, he said they are not able to participate in meetings on a variety of subjects, from the family or community level to the wider national and international levels adding that even when they are able to participate in such meetings, the quality of their participation is entirely dependent on the quality of access that they have.

According to him, even economic activities, including the simple business of buying and selling, have also been seriously affected with shops and markets closed in the physical space.  He stressed that “beyond how this impacts individuals, we also see that companies and businesses in societies and context that enable them to trade online are flourishing more than ever before while those small businesses that do not have the capacity to do the same are being throttled out of existence by the current situation.”

Mr. Ojo also highlighted the negative impact of the situation on the “business of governance and citizen participation in government activities, not just to receive benefits, which is important enough, but to also contribute to political discussions, input in policy-formulation, decision-making, and so on.”

He argued that the situation also impacts people’s access to justice, particularly in the context of COVID-19, when the adjudication of cases, both civil and criminal, has gone online in many countries as a result of which those who are online cannot participate and cannot have access to justice.

Mr. Ojo noted that in terms of access to knowledge and education, during the extended period of the lockdown, many educational institutions at different levels took to the Internet to continue to deliver educational instructions to their students and conduct major examinations online.

He said:  “Just imagine those societies and communities where there is no access to the Internet; what has been the fate of students in those places? They are permanently left behind. And these are real-life lived experiences of many people in the global south.”

Mr. Ojo insisted that it is difficult to square this reality with the assertion in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”

He said although a lot more research will be required to fully understand the issues and their various dimensions in different contexts, many of them were already highlighted in the Joint Statement on Digital Inclusion launched by the Freedom Online Coalition at its 8th Annual Freedom Online Conference, which was held in Accra in February this year, adding that the statement identified both the supply-side and the demand-side factors as well as a number of recommendations to address the challenges and advance the common goal of promoting and achieving digital inclusion.