De African Digital Rights Network (ADRN) heeft een nieuw rapport gepubliceerd waarin de toevoer en verspreiding van digitale surveillance technologie in Afrika in kaart is gebracht. Onderzoeker Anand Sheombar van het lectoraat Procesinnovatie & Informatiesystemen is betrokken bij het ADRN-collectief en heeft samen met de Engelse journalist Sebastian Klovig Skelton, door middel van desk research de aanvoerlijnen vanuit Westerse en Noordelijke landen geanalyseerd. De bevindingen zijn te lezen in dit Supply-side report hoofdstuk van het rapport. APA-bronvermelding: Klovig Skelton, S., & Sheombar, A. (2023). Mapping the supply of surveillance technologies to Africa Supply-side report. In T. Roberts (Ed.), Mapping the Supply of Surveillance Technologies to Africa: Case Studies from Nigeria, Ghana, Morocco, Malawi, and Zambia (pp. 136-167). Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies.
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An installation based on the research for the last book in the Ebifananyi series. The book presents a largely visual social biography of the photograph Henry Morton Stanley made in 1875 of Ssekabaka Muteesa 1 of Buganda and his chiefs. The group portrait is one of the first photographs made in the territory currently known as Uganda. The social biography I made is partly based on historical sources and partly ‘written’ in the form of a chain of responses to and interpretations of those historical sources. These responses and interpretations were, as a result of my interest in the photograph, made in 2016 and 2017 by (mostly Ugandan) artists.This installation is what you could call a spatial assemblage. It includes prints, collages, projections and a book. All of these components show – or are directly related to – the pictures made by explorers John Hanning Speke and James Augustus Grant during and around their visit to Muteesa, thirteen years before Stanley made the photograph. Considering Speke’s and Grant’s drawings gives an insight into the appreciation for pictures on the side of the Baganda and the use of these same visual materials by the visitors. It helps to understand the context in which Stanley brought out a camera to make a ‘drawing with light’ that Muteesa and his chiefs may never have had a chance to see themselves.The title “My Guide Through Africa” is taken from words jotted down by James Augustus Grant on the cover of an instruction book on how to make watercolours. He carried the book with him on his journey through ‘Africa’. As this book was a ‘Guide’, so are the drawings made by him and his colleague. Now that we know them, we cannot avoid for our gaze to be moulded by journal notes and drawings made in the 19th century.Recent responses to the historical pictures were made by Violet Nantume, Herman van Hoogdalem, Stella Atal and me (in collaboration with R. Canon Griffin). Additional thoughts about components of the installation can be found in this blogpost and of course in “Ebifananyi 8, Ekifananyi Kya Muteesa – The King has been pictured (by many)” (for sale online in a set with three or all seven other books in the series here).The installation is part of the group show ‘Dwell Act Transform’ on artistic research in the North (of the Netherlands). The historical materials presented are part of the collections of the Royal Geographical Society (Speke), National Library of Scotland (Grant) and The Ugandan Society (Stanley’s and Speke’s books).
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Creative tourism has recently emerged as an important area of tourism development, particularly in the Global North. In the Global South, studies of the profile of creative tourists and their motives for partaking in creative tourism are limited. This paper investigates creative tourism demand among South African millennials, analysing what motivates their participation and developing a descriptive consumer profile. CHAID analysis was used for segmentation, revealing a group with a high participation intention and a second group with a low probability of creative tourism participation. Creative tourism intentions were linked to knowledge acquisition, skills and escape motivations, and demographic characteristics including relationship status and gender. Respondents were more likely to participate in domestic rather than international creative tourism, indicating the potential for creative tourism development in South Africa. The findings could help managers and policymakers meet the needs of creative tourists, addressing shortfalls in product development, experience design and marketing.
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This paper describes the work done to track the supply chains of sur-veillance technologies from the global North to African governments for illegal surveillance of their citizens. We conducted desk research to analyse the supply side of surveillance technology exported to African countries. Our preliminary findings show nine key exporting states-actors for surveillance technologies to Africa. These are China; European Union agencies, and member states France, Germany, Italy; Israel, United Kingdom, Russia, and the United States of Amer-ica. Regarding the specific surveillance technologies being transferred, each export-ing state tends to have a focus area, both in geographic area and within the five surveillance technology categories covered by this study. The paper identified six motives for state surveillance, including the suppliers' perspective. These are: 1) surveillance as legitimacy for state security, 2) surveillance for political gain, 3) surveillance as diplomacy, 4) surveillance as a tool for development, 5) Surveil-lance as neocolonialism, and 6) surveillance as business opportunity. Further re-search is needed to deepen the analysis of surveillance technologies exports to the African continent and the human rights violations.
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The Middle East and North Africa region has been absent form stocktaking exercises on social accountability initiatives (SAI), an umbrella term to designate citizen-led tools aimed at socio-political change. We argue that this sidelining is unwarranted, given the proliferation of participatory governance initiatives, civic associations and popular mobilisation in Arab societies after 2011. Whereas the struggle for improved accountability in the Arab world remains under-researched, analysis of authoritarian regime tactics has proliferated. The fact is, however, that many Arab societies have experimented with mechanisms to apply political pressure on corrupt elites while international donors have launched diverse SAIs, including community score cards and participatory and gender-responsive budgeting initiatives. In this chapter, we first identify this double gap: not only has the literature on SAIs overlooked the MENA region but scholarship on the Middle East has largely failed to recognise initiatives launched across the region over the past decade as SAIs. Then, we aim to address the blind spot of Arab SAI’s as pathways towards improved governance. Finally, we present an overview of extant literature and introduce a set of four research questions to better understand what social accountability means for people on the ground. These questions focus on the various meanings of social accountability (musā’ala vs muhāsaba), its modes of mobilisation, the responses from authorities to such initiatives and their overall outcomes.
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Terms like ‘big data’, ‘data science’, and ‘data visualisation’ have become buzzwords in recent years and are increasingly intertwined with journalism. Data visualisation may further blur the lines between science communication and graphic design. Our study is situated in these overlaps to compare the design of data visualisations in science news stories across four online news media platforms in South Africa and the United States. Our study contributes to an understanding of how well-considered data visualisations are tools for effective storytelling, and offers practical recommendations for using data visualisation in science communication efforts.
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The presentation offers insights from teachers on four continents (Africa, Asia, Europe, North America) about the benefits of transparency in learning and teaching (TILT) for equitable student success in their diverse contexts.
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African citizens are increasingly being surveilled, profiled, and targeted online in ways that violate their rights. African governments frequently use pandemic or terrorism-related security risks to grant themselves additional surveillance rights and significantly increase their collection of monitoring apparatus and technologies while spending billions of dollars to conduct surveillance (Roberts et al. 2023). Surveillance is a prominent strategy African governments use to limit civic space (Roberts and Mohamed Ali 2021). Digital technologies are not the root of surveillance in Africa because surveillance practices predate the digital age (Munoriyarwa and Mare 2023). Surveillance practices were first used by colonial governments, continued by post-colonial governments, and are currently being digitalized and accelerated by African countries. Throughout history, surveillance has been passed down from colonizers to liberators, and some African leaders have now automated it (Roberts et al. 2023). Many studies have been conducted on illegal state surveillance in the United States, China, and Europe (Feldstein 2019; Feldstein 2021). Less is known about the supply of surveillance technologies to Africa. With a population of almost 1.5 billion people, Africa is a continent where many citizens face surveillance with malicious intent. As mentioned in previous chapters, documenting the dimensions and drivers of digital surveillance in Africa is
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Transboundary conservation has an important, yet often undervalued, role in the international conservation regime. When applied to the legally ambiguous and interconnected marine environment this is magnified. The lack of clear guidance for transboundary marine conservation from the international conservation community exacerbates this problem, leaving individual initiatives to develop their own governance arrangements. Yet, well-managed transboundary marine protected areas (MPAs) have the potential to contribute significantly to global conservation aims. Conversely, in a period where there is increasing interest in marine resources and space from all sectors, the designation of MPAs can create or amplify a regional conflict. In some instances, states have used MPAs to extend rights over disputed marine resources, restrict the freedom of others and establish sovereignty over maritime space. Six case studies were taken from Europe, North Africa and the Middle East to illustrate how states have interpreted and utilized different legislative mechanisms to either come together or diverge over the governance of marine resources or maritime space. Each of the case studies illustrates how different actors have used the same legislative tools, but with different interpretations and applications, to justify their claims. It is clear that the role of science combined with a deeper engagement with stakeholders can play a critical role in tempering conflict between states. Where states are willing to cooperate, the absence of clear guidelines at the global level means that often ad hoc measures are put into place, with the international frameworks then playing catch up. Balancing different jurisdictional claims with the conservation of the marine environment, whilst considering the increasing special economic interests will become increasingly difficult. Developing a transboundary conservation tool, such as the simple conservation caveats found in the Barcelona Convention and Antarctic Convention, which allow for the establishment of intergovernmental cooperation without prejudicing any outstanding jurisdictional issue, would provide a framework for the development of individual transboundary MPAs.
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