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Africa is a key emerging market for tech companies. More than three quarters of the continent do not have reliable access to internet services, limiting the reach of communications, and impairing the provision of financial, medical and government services.
“Increasingly we’ve seen technology companies like Google and others becoming very active in the development space,” says the principal investigator of the project ConflictNET, Nicole Stremlau, who is also head of the programme for comparative media law and policy at Oxford University in the United Kingdom, and professor in law and society in the digital world at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies there. “Whether it’s in biometric IDs, using AI to predict where crises are going to happen, or providing their cloud services to African governments to store all of their health data.”
While previous efforts to expand internet access have focused on urban areas, new technologies such as drones and satellites are now being used to provide affordable access in remote regions where the influence of the state is weaker, and where there may be civil disorder.
Without sufficient moderation efforts, hate speech can easily spread and drive violent conflict. In 2021, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen released internal documents that showed the company was aware of such issues with Ethiopian language accounts, accusing the company of failing to act and allowing the situation to deteriorate with deadly consequences. “What was important about the project was that we were able to contribute to this really critical debate as it was unfolding around the world,” adds Stremlau.
These issues continue to be relevant – Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, recently announced that the company would end support for fact-checking programmes on Facebook and Instagram. Given the limits of fact-checking that ConflictNET already uncovered in Africa, it is likely that the challenges and concerns raised by the project will only become more significant in future.
Online moderation
ConflictNET explored questions of how to ethically deliver connectivity in such circumstances. Stremlau’s team conducted hundreds of interviews with citizens, NGOs, tech company staff and government and public officials across Ghana, Kenya and South Africa to gauge the impact of social media in these countries.
A key finding was how power imbalances affected the ability of local authorities to respond effectively to problems online, such as disinformation and hate speech. The situation raises questions about sovereignty, and the ability of states to control information flows and national security. “When you have a country in Africa that’s facing a corporation in Silicon Valley with 100 times its GDP, that company is not paying attention to the very real and valid concerns that this community might have,” remarks Stremlau.
As a result, there has been a significant rise in internet shutdowns in Africa, as governments search for the quickest and most effective ways to prevent violence spreading. Stremlau adds that when ConflictNET was launched, these shutdowns were a rarity. But by the time the project ended, they had become a familiar phenomenon across the continent and beyond.
While internet shutdowns are typically presented as the actions of draconian regimes, Stremlau says they can have the support of local communities, identifying a specific case in Shashamane, Ethiopia. “The community felt frustration at what was spreading online, and that no one was able to respond to this in a more nuanced way. I think it's partly because of these deep failures around online content moderation.”
Investing in local talent
A key element of ConflictNET, notes Stremlau, was to work meaningfully with local researchers, building collaborations that have persisted long after the project ended. “We’ve been working with the colleagues at Addis Ababa University, and the University of Johannesburg, and now they’re working with us at Oxford. I think we really contributed to building the careers and supporting a lot of colleagues in Africa.”
Stremlau and her team have presented their findings to a range of stakeholders, including students, academics, humanitarian organisations, the UN Human Rights Commission, the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, government bodies, NGOs, and at local institutions across Africa, including in Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa.
The project also launched the Social Media, Conflict and Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, a platform for developing public and policy engagement on critical issues related to social media, conflict, governance and migration.
Since the end of the project, which was funded by the EU via a European Research Council grant, Stremlau has turned her attention to broadening the understanding of key actors responsible for providing law, order, justice and security during humanitarian crises, and the role of technology in spaces where the state has limited reach.