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Esterhuysen urges Internet use to improve governance

Esterhuysen urges Internet use to improve governance
By Fridah Nkonde in Grahamstown, South Africa
Tue 11 Sep. 2012, 10:28 CAT

AFRICAN governments should use the internet to improve good governance and transparency, says South Africa's Association for Progressive Communication executive director Anriette Esterhuysen.

And Cameroonian blogger Dibussi Tande says the internet should be open and free to promote growth in the region.

During the 16th annual Highway Africa and the Global Forum for Media Development on how the media frame the continents geopolitics, trade, and economic growth, Esterhuysen in her presentation on Internet Freedom noted that most African governments were responding with fear to the increase in people's access to internet.

"Instead of them seeing how it internet could increase good governance and transparency," she said.

Esterhuysen further said there was need for journalists to report on internet freedom.

"We should not take it for granted that internet restrictions are increasing not only in repressive countries. Censorship and filtering of information on the internet has increased. Surveillance of the internet by government is a violation of privacy. There has also been a loss of rights to anonymity," Esterhuysen said.

She said the fact that there had been an increase in access to the internet meant that had also been an increase in fear and constriction by most governments.

Esterhuysen said there was need for journalists to ask themselves on how tolerant their political and social cultures were when it came to internet freedom and how safe they felt when they were online.

She urged journalists to find out whether they were protected by law when they were online or not.

Esterhuysen also urged journalists to know their internet rights and fight hard to keep them.

Meanwhile, Tande said the number of people in Africa that had access to the internet had tripled from 34 million in the last decade.
He said the issue of governments controlling the internet was a worldwide issue and that most people were finding it hard to have access to information because of the many obstacles that were being put in place by those in authority.

Tande said putting a limitation on information to be accessed on the internet was a violation of user's rights.

"We have seen this in most of the countries where governments block facebook or twitter so that people don't communicate to each other. There are also certain laws that have been put up by some governments that do not help grow the internet," Tande said.

He said internet should be open and free to promote growth in a country.
"There is need for people to call for an open internet which is inclusive, participatory and self-regulating," said Tande.

MTN, Barclays and Telkom are the main sponsors of the conference.

Labels: INTERNET

posted by MrK @ 4:43 PM