2022 Africa and Middle East Regional Meeting

The digital revolution is rapidly transforming how we live, communicate, and work as part of an accelerating global societal transformation. The changes are however also amplifying the digital divide, creating new threats to the very fabric of African democracy and sustainable development, with information increasingly weaponised by malign actors to subvert governance. This session will bring together leading African organisations that are pioneering responsible adoption and use of technology, as well as watchdogs who help guard against the digital subversion of democracy. The discussion will explore the current threats to open government and responsible technology, and will examine practical ways to strengthen Africa's governance architecture, based on transnational multi-stakeholder collaboration.

Examples of questions/answers:

What are the issues that require collective efforts to promote and protect the digital space in our region?
- (now to bridge the digital divide, now to identify threats to democracy such as coordinated disinformation and weaponised hate speech, now to ensure more equitable access to digital opportunities)

What are some solutions that showed some successes?
- (Tech-Ambassadors/TechPlomacy, AU's African Charter on Democracy, Elections & Governance operationalisation of OGP principles, ADDO’s partnership with UNDP/UNESCO to detect/counter disinformation + hate speech that attacks elections and other democratic processes)

How can we work better together to drive the agenda?
- (Morocco's digital working group, OGP Kenya's proposed 2023 high level forum, ADDO's pan-African community of practice for OSINT watchdogs, AUDA-NEPAD-ACDEG development of continental govtech platforms, and the opportunity to collaboratively build open source repo of govtech/civictech in the global south)