Change Makers What are some of the most promising innovations, best practices, and initiatives that are contributing to the expansion of Internet freedom and digital rights in Africa? I think tying Internet freedom to wider democratic governance concerns makes Internet freedom more relevant. The work I did with Internet Without Borders and that CIPESA and others are doing is necessary to appreciate how the digital realm is now so connected to promoting and violation of rights. Also, pro-democracy innovations and organizations like Human Rights Information and Documentation Systems (HURIDOCS), a truly global organization, with a majority of staff in the Global South), Mnemonic, Ushahidi, and Engine Room are doing great work. CIPESA and PI’s multistakeholder forums also help create safe spaces for critical discussions. They are the new public sphere for deliberation. What are some of the emerging threats or pressing challenges to Internet freedom in Africa, and how can we stay ahead of them? How foreign state and non-state actors enter into collaborations to acquire, use, and control personal data in Africa and how this threatens the citizens’ security and human rights. There is not much research on this due to logistical challenges. Therefore, local researchers must foster international collaborations to move the field forward and must agree on key questions and the methodologies that can be used to address these questions. Although network disruptions are still on the rise, there are significant information security breaches of voters’ data ahead of and during elections. As I argued five years ago, “As a several African countries embrace biometric technology-driven elections, the community needs to adopt a broader approach to information controls that address all information security breaches. This is even though some of these technologies do not exclusively rely on Internet transmission control protocols to transmit and store data. This article argues that such a broader approach accords with The Citizen Lab’s conceptualisation of information controls: a broad term used to define all actions that governments, the private sector, and other actors take through the Internet and other information communications technologies, for example, to secure (e.g., encryption) information for political ends.’ An acceptance of this view will lead to more evidence-based and broader election threat modelling. Such modelling, based on revised indicators, would consider a wide range of adversaries that potentially exploit vulnerabilities in decentralized technologies and data regardless of the medium or whether such data is in transit, cloud, storage, or at rest.” “As a number of African countries embrace biometric technology-driven elections, the community needs to adopt a broader approach to information controls that address all information security breaches. This is regardless of the fact that some of ...” 8 A CIPESA Series