Surveillance Law in Africa: a Review of Six Countries

Abstract

This review provides the first comparative analysis of African legal surveillance frameworks. The study identifies nine core principles derived from existing guidelines as an analytical framework to identify opportunities to strengthen privacy protection, while narrowly targeting surveillance on the most serious crimes. Six detailed country reports are synthesised in this comparative analysis to produce a series of actionable recommendations for policy, practice and further research.

Analysis of the Cybersecurity Threats in Botswana Using Publicly Available Data

“…However, African countries have invested more in surveillance technologies than in cybersecurity initiatives. This is evidenced by the procurement of spying equipment and systems such as the International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) catcher, NSO Group's Pegasus, and the collection of customer data from telecom operators (Sutherland, Digital privacy in Africa: cybersecurity, data protection & surveillance, 2018;Jili, 2010;Roberts, Mohamed Ali, Farahat, Oloyede, & Mutung'u, 2021). These procurements are done in countries where CSIRTs are under-resourced, insufficient, and lack cyber-attacks and defense registers.…”