Threats to Individual Privacy

To a degree unprecedented in history, individual privacy is now under siege

in West Africa. As Africans gleefully clutch to their mobile phones and

savor the benefits of this wonderful communication technology, this social

revolution may turn out to be a mixed blessing. And unless many

irregularities that find abode in the sub-region are fixed, the celebratory

mood unleashed by the coming of cell phones will not last. In fact, this may

help doom many of the developing aspirations in Africa’s evolving nations.

From Nigeria to Ghana, Cameroun to Egypt, Tanzania to Cote

d’Ivoire, cell phones are fast becoming new tools that allow the invasion of

privacy, and potential weapons of repression in the hands of power-drunk

governments with their ubiquitous and overzealous security arm. With an

explosion in the mobile telephony subscriber base, which has now given

birth to an unprecedented boom in social and economic activities, African

governments now grapple with the flip side of success: being befuddled with

an environment where crime festers with dizzying ferocity. As the world’s

poorest inhabited continent groans under the pangs of a booming mobile

phone-assisted crime wave, seeming helpless sometimes, the glad tiding is

that there are new initiatives being put in place to tame the security scourge.
But there is also a snag, for some of the measures seem set to both expand

the powers of government and curtail the freedom and privacy of mobile

phone subscribers in Africa.1 In a manner that may redefine many things,

many African governments are yet to come to terms with the daunting task

of crime fighting and respect for constitutional rights of citizens, especially

as it borders on privacy, freedom and fundamental human rights. [it might

be useful in your project to explain the constitutional rights and the

rights of privacy that exist in the different African countries. I would

imagine there is a range of protections or lack thereof.]An academic

journey around some recent security challenges in some countries in the

continent and official responses response will illuminate this cutting fear.

The Heart of the Matter

Other Forms of Assault on Privacy

Legal Bulwarks for Privacy

Unfortunately, until law courts begin to test and set the limits on the

need to balance national security with people rights, the prospect appears

1
Analyzing the implications of the proposed plan of the Nigerian mobile telephone
regulator to install gadgets on masts and towers to monitor the location of
customers, Oluniyi D. Ajao concluded that this would invite devastating blows on
privacy and rights of the citizenry.
http://www.ictworks.org/news/2010/08/06/ncc-wants-track-nigerians-
movements-mobile-phones (accessed on October 2, 2010)
bleak across Africa. Though the various constitutions make provisions for

protection of fundamental human rights, including privacy, all the statutes

predated the new challenge posed by the mobile communication instrument.

While the legal ground rules remain unclear about how to marry security

needs with human rights, another vital issue gives weapons to fears that

infraction on rights may continue: the absence of freedom of information

act, which seeks to open up government to the citizenry, abolish secrecy in

the running of government business and endue the people with trust in their

government. Of all 16 countries in West Africa, only one – South Africa,

Zimbabwe, Uganda, and Liberia – have passed and signed into law this all-

important piece of legislation, becoming operative in these countries in

2000, 2002, 2006, and 2010 respectively.2

The rest have been dillydallying over the issue. Since 1999 when

democracy returned to Nigeria, the media and civil society groups have

literally been on the war path with the ruling class who cringes that allowing

such a law to see the light of the day will strip will invite chaos and expose

national security. In effect, what this means is that it is only one country –

2
While several countries of the world have added this important legislation to their
statute books, Africa lags behind, watering the impression that the continent prefers
shadiness as opposed to transparency; see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_information_legislation
Liberia - out 16 nations in West Africa that has taken a bold step in ensuring

signed this Ditto other African nations, leaving over 300 million mobile

phone subscribers to continue to exist at the mercy of overzealous

government agencies.