Admire Mare

THE year 2024 has been dubbed the “ultimate election year” given that the majority of the world will be electing new leaders.  Almost twenty (20) African countries including Namibia will be holding their parliamentary and presidential elections this year. 

Some of the African countries that will be going to the polls include Algeria, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Chad, Comoros, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, South Sudan, Togo and Tunisia. 

Elections are happening in all these countries at a time when digital and social media platforms have become essential conduits for political participation, voter mobilisation, dissemination of electoral information, and campaign venues. 

The continent has over the years witnessed a steady growth in terms of mobile phone and smartphone penetration rates. For instance, as of December 2023, Sub-Saharan Africa had a 43% mobile phone penetration rate, according to GSMA. It also boasted of 25% mobile internet penetration rate. This has been largely driven by the mass availability of cheaper smartphones from Asia and locally produced versions. 

Given the mass permeation of mobile phones and internet, digital transformation possibilities have been unlocked in most countries. Mobile connectivity and the internet have accelerated social media penetration rates on the continent. 

Despite structural challenges associated with a lack of reliable electricity, underdeveloped telecommunication infrastructure, high cost of data, invasive digital surveillance practices, African users have embraced digital and social media platforms in their everyday lives for a myriad of purposes.

Buoyed by the mass uptake of digital and social media affordances, politicians, political parties, electoral management bodies (EMBs), journalists, and ordinary citizens in Africa have creatively used these platforms for innovative content creation, distribution, and engagement. 

Platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp have become indispensable avenues for election campaigns, voter education, fact checking, and connecting with the youth, who are often seen as disengaging and alienated from mainstream politics. 

Given their social and technical affordances, digital and social media platforms are often hailed for opening up previously inaccessible political and electoral spaces.  They are also celebrated for the ability to give voice to marginalised groups and allow for two-way forms of communication between the elected and the electorate. 

In recent years, there has been a deep-seated concern that these platforms are double-edged. Although they can be a positive tool for deepening electoral democracy, they can also contribute to the closure of political spaces. This can be seen in the form of propagating hate speech, misogyny, mis/disinformation, surveillance, identity theft, and other cyber-attacks. 

Why the principles and guidelines in Africa?

Cognisant of the double-edged nature of digital and social media in electoral processes, the Association of African Electoral Authorities’ (AAEA) 10th General Assembly held in Maputo, Mozambique in November 2022 kick-started conversations that culminated in the drafting and adoption of the “Principles and Guidelines for The Use of Digital and Social Media in Elections in Africa”.

The guidelines were recently launched by the South African, deputy president Paul Mashatile, in Johannesburg. Some of the key objectives of the guidelines are to enhance existing continental and regional normative frameworks governing the conduct of elections by specifically incorporating issues of digital and social media in elections, to create awareness among EMBs and other stakeholders on the benefits and threats of digital and social media to the electoral process and integrity and to foster policy development on digital and social media in elections by EMBs, regional economic communities (RECs) and member states.

The guidelines are aimed at providing guardrails for EMBs, political parties, journalists, platform companies and other stakeholders in terms of leveraging digital media to enhance democracy while safeguarding against its potential perils. For instance, coordinated disinformation campaigns and digital harms to human rights have negatively affected the constitutional mandates of the EMBs like the (ECN) to organise elections and undermined its efforts to promote peaceful and democratic elections.

As the continent and Namibia in particular goes to the polls later this year, it is important to implement the provisions of the guidelines. Various role players in the electoral information ecosystem must ensure that vulnerable marginalised constituencies are protected. Gender-specific concerns faced by female candidates and journalists in elections should also be seriously addressed. This will ensure that the upcoming elections are free, fair, and credible.  

Blueprint for concrete action

There is a temptation to treat the recent launch of these guidelines as just another talk show. Africa has adopted many soft laws in the past. Some of these instruments are still gathering dust in cabinets. Our continent has become a laughingstock for being good at coming up with great soft laws on paper which are rarely implemented by member states.

 There is an urgent need for Namibia and other SADC countries to domesticate these guidelines. Instead of treating them as a “nice to have” document, there is a need for electoral role players in Namibia to put in place action plans, monitoring and evaluation tools metrics, and transparency reports. 

Given the concerns around democratic deficit and creeping digital authoritarianism across the continent, the guidelines have the potential to help Namibia fortify its electoral democracy, and ensure that every citizen’s voice is heard and valued in the electoral process. It provides a starting point for addressing the multifaceted electoral challenges associated with the digital age. 

What needs to be done?

In order to promote and protect digital rights, there is a need for the government, ECN, platform companies, political parties, internet intermediaries, journalists, and citizens to play their part.

The government of Namibia should ensure a robust legal and regulatory framework for digital and social media that upholds the principles of democracy. It should also ensure that there are no arbitrary limits to freedom of expression and media freedom during the electoral cycle.

The government and the Communication Regulatory of Namibia (CRAN) must ensure effective data protection under a data protection authority throughout the electoral cycle. This means prioritizing the passage of cyber and data protection legislation. 

The ECN should engage with platform companies such as Meta, Google, Byte Dance, and X to protect electoral integrity and guard against online harms. This might entail calling upon these platform companies to conduct human rights assessments before, during, and after the elections. It should also develop strategies and implement measures to address online harms such as hacking, online gender-based violence, disinformation, and surveillance during the electoral cycle.

Internet service providers and telecommunication operators like MTC, Telecom, and Paratus should ensure all Namibians have access to universal, equitable, affordable, and meaningful access to the internet in order to be able to access election-related information disseminated online. 

Platform companies have the responsibility to ensure that the procedures for seeking remedies are clear, well-known to Namibian citizens, easy to access, and capable of providing appropriate redress. commit to the highest standards of equality, non-discrimination, fairness, and transparency in accordance with international human rights standards. These firms should come up with legal transparent cooperation agreements with ECN focusing on protecting the digital rights of Namibian users. 

In accordance with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, platform companies are duty bound to put in place human rights due diligence and human rights impact assessment processes to identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for how they address their impacts on human rights throughout the electoral cycle.

CRAN and ECN should put in place an oversight body to ensure compliance and understanding of rules and election-related standards.

Main political parties (such as SWAPO, Popular Democratic Movement, Namibia Patriotic Front, and Landless People’s Movement) and candidates should not commit, support, encourage, or condone any form of potential online harm during the electoral cycle. This means cases of online misogyny, hate speech, and harassment of female candidates should never be tolerated. Political parties should come up with social media codes of conduct.

Civil society organisations also have a crucial role to play. They should timeously implement media and information as well as digital literacy and fact-checking skills initiatives to ensure that users of social media can easily identify, and report content implicated in potential digital harms or the unlawful undermining of the credibility of an election.

News media and journalists in the country should ensure that the information shared on the digital and social media platforms during the forthcoming elections is factual, balanced, and provide fair and balanced coverage of candidates, parties, and issues, and violating rights or promoting violence.

 * Admire Mare is an Associate Professor and Head of Department: Communication and Media Studies, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He has an interest in digital rights, technology, platform justice, digital journalism, platformisation of everyday life, and the nexus between data and society.