An analysis of Social Media use in The SADC region - 2014 - 2020 Social media law and policy inconsistencies Governments in the region have also been showing inconsistencies in their regulation of social media use. For example, in July 2018 the Zambian government said it had no plans of introducing a levy on cyber space on social media highlighting that Zambia has adequate laws binding the cyber space to benefit the Zambian people.195 In January of the same year, the same Minister196 had highlighted that three bills were being introduced in Parliament, to support productive use of internet and social media being the cyber security and cyber-crime bill, e-commerce bill and data protection bill.”197 Barriers to access to social media In general, the limited use of social media in the region is also attributed to the lack of internet access. The subsequent barriers to Internet use within households199 connectivity include lack of coverage, absence of Internet-enabled devices, and cost of the Internet in terms of connections, services and digital literacy as shown below in figure 13 below: Figure 13: Barriers to internet use The same was seen during reporting of abuse for example Xenophobia198 on social media, but the deputy Speaker of the National Assembly Catherine Namugala ruled that the Zambian Government will not run its affairs based on information on social media. This was after leader of the opposition Jack Mwiimbu raised a point of order to ask what Government was doing to protect its nationals in South Africa, following xenophobic information circulating on social media. Source: After Access200 195 July 5 2018 , In a ministerial statement in parliament. https://www.lusakatimes.com/2018/07/05/zambia-will-not-introduce-tax-on-socialmedia-mushimba/ 196 Communications Minister Brain Mushimba 197 https://www.lusakatimes.com/2018/01/27/government-introduce-laws-social-media-misuse/ 198 https://www.lusakatimes.com/2017/11/01/zambian-government-will-not-run-affairs-based-information-social-media-namugala/ 199 RIA After Access survey data, 2017 200 RIA After Access survey data, 2017 36 https://zimbabwe.misa.org