As one of the few books focused exclusively on the governance of new media across the African continent, Regulating Digital Media in Africa offers a timely and critical engagement with the legal and policy frameworks shaping broadcasting, social media, and the broader digital ecosystem. Drawing on in-depth case studies from African scholars who cover a wide range of African countries and political systems and interviews with professionals involved in shaping or contesting regulatory outcomes, the book reveals key trends, contradictions, and policy dilemmas in new media regulation. It highlights how governments are responding to challenges such as internet shutdowns, online harms, data governance, and digital legislation.
This book provides a strong conceptual and empirical foundation for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners interested in digital governance in Africa. With its Global South perspective, it offers valuable contributions to broader debates on media regulation, sovereignty, and internet governance.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Introduction
Vincent Obia and Sulayman Bah
Part 1: Regulatory Trends and the Research Landscape
1. Regulating Digital Technologies in Africa: Navigating a Shifting Tech Landscape
Hayes Mawindi Mabwezara
2. Human Rights, Freedom of Expression, and Multi-Stakeholderism in the Regulation of New Media Technologies in Africa – Interview with Guilherme Canela
Vincent Obia
3. Mapping A Research Agenda for Digital Media Regulation in Africa: A Systematic Analysis
Vincent Obia
Part 2: State Policy Approaches and Regulatory Challenges
4. Cyber Security Laws, Digital Media Spaces and Media Freedoms in Zambia
Youngson Ndawana, Joanne Knowles, and Elastus Mambwe
5. Morocco’s Approach to Digital Media Regulation: State Policy, Power Asymmetry, Platform Dialogue – Interview with Latifa Akharbach
Yemisi Akinbobola
6. Regime Change?: Digitalisation, Media Convergence and the Constraints to Reforming Ghana’s Analogue Era Regulatory System
Kobina Bedu-Addo
7. Broadcast Media Regulation and Democratic Transitions in Africa: A Nigerian and South African Case Study
Yemisi Akinbobola, Vincent Obia, and Trust Matsilele
Part 3: Digital Media Censorship: Frictions, Tensions, Reactions
8. Balancing Freedom with Responsibility or Simply Pandering to Political Whims: An Analysis of Kenya’s Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act, 2018
Esther King’ori and Maureen Syallow
9. Interrogating Online Journalism Regulation and Censorship in Africa – Interview with Churchill Otieno
Sulayman Bah
10. Senegal’s Approach to Digital Media Regulation: Limited Civil Society Consultation, State Control, and the Need for a Continental Approach to Governance – Interview with David Diaz-Jogeix
Sulayman Bah
11. Evasive Journalism: Circumventing the Regulation of Online Journalism in The Gambia
Sulayman Bah
Conclusion
Winston Mano
Index