By MOSES KARANJA
In Summary
- The most contentious item in the convention is perhaps the provision that processing of personal data of public interest shall be undertaken after authorisation by a protection authority.
- This ambiguous concept offers legal cushioning for repressive regimes.
When the African Heads of State meet in Malabo,
Equatorial Guinea, for the 23rd AU Summit from June 26, 2014, they are
scheduled to adopt the African Union Convention on Security in
Cyberspace and Personal Data Protection. This is a laudable response by
the AU towards growing insecurity in cyberspace and the need to manage
its attendant technological, information and legal risks.
A closer look at the draft convention, however,
shows elements that, if unchecked, undermine the very objective it was
conceived around: To contribute to economic and socio-political
development through cyberspace resources.
With the adoption of this legislation, Africa’s
online economy, human rights and international co-operation could be
seriously compromised.
Online Economy
As more Africans use the Internet — 20 per cent of
the continent is expected to go online by end of the year, up from 10
per cent in 2010, the world’s fastest rate of Internet penetration —
digital dividends are expected to follow.
For the past two years, Africa’s population of 1.1
billion has been adding 167,000 mobile handsets daily to the
connectivity matrix. The annual mobile broadband connectivity growth
rate of over 40 per cent is twice as high as the global average.
The impact of this connectivity is clear: In 2013
alone, Internet operators in sub-Saharan Africa made $52 billion,
including $21 billion in taxes, and created more than 6 million jobs.
A new report by the Centre for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS) and McAfee, titled Net Losses: Estimating
the Global Cost of Cybercrime, estimates that the annual cost of
cybercrime to the global economy is more than $400 billion. According to
the report, Africa may have lost the least amounts to cybercrime,
compared with other regions, but when the actual loss is expressed as a
percentage of the continent’s GDP, the amounts lost are significant —
more than maritime piracy.
Concerns about intellectual property, child
trafficking, corporate surveillance, website defacement and identity
theft are rising. As broadband speeds increase, so do cybercrimes.
The AU’s draft convention, seeking to secure
online commerce requires full disclosure of identity information between
contracting parties. This raises two issues: Enforceability and
privacy.
First, implementing these requirements will prove
almost impossible for traders and their agents since acquisition,
verification and safe storage are complicated processes demanding extra
time and human resources.
Second, promotion of online commerce requires
striking a delicate balance between security and privacy. If a
brick-and-mortar shop in Nairobi does not ask for my home address and
tax PIN number, why should an online shop in Indonesia ask for it?
This compounds fears associated with online scams
due to the risks of posting sensitive data online. The ease of using
these platforms plays a huge role in attracting and retaining users
online.
The African Economic Outlook reports that in 2013,
Africa grew by about 4 per cent, compared with 3 per cent for the
global economy. The role of ICT in sustaining this growth is in
connecting Africa to the global marketplace and vice versa.
The easier and safer it is for Africans to conduct online commerce, the more resilient the overall economy gets.
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