Morning!

Today we enter our last day of discussion on Socio-cultural issues. 

To begin with, we discuss issues relating to content control and freedom of expression.  The internet governance discussions on content focus on the need to control three groups of content.  Firstly, content where a global consensus is in place including child pornography and terrorism.  Secondly, content that might be sensitive to particular countries, regions or ethnic groups due to their religious and cultural values. Thirdly, politically and ideologically sensitive content. There already exist several initiatives that limit the potential misuse of the internet.  Are there such initiatives in Africa? How can we enhance national legislation to include a content policy that would guarantee the protection of human rights, specifically freedom of expression and also remove the ambiguous role of ISPs, law enforcement agencies and other players?

Secondly, we discuss issues relating to the delivery of education services over the internet (e-learning).  Many students from developing countries are today opting for online education to overcome the challenge of prohibitive costs associated with foreign education.  Increased cross-border education has brought about international governance issues in relation to accreditation of institutions, recognition of qualification and quality assurance.  Is there an existing national policy on online education?  What measures need to be put in place to assist our local universities develop e-learning programmes in order to protect our culture/traditions implicitly transmitted through our local institutions as well as prevent capital flight?

References:

1.      Kurbalija, J. and Gelbstein, E. (2005) Internet governance:  Issues, Actors and Divides

Again, you are encouraged to contribute to previous discussion threads.  

Kind regards

Mwende

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