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? The collaboration happening across organizations on the continent, the networks and coalitions and partnerships developing to address critical issues related to access and rights online, across borders and on a regional level, the exchange of ideas and best practices; I think these are some of the most promising trends I am seeing emerge. I am also seeing a trend in access to funding that is contextual and targeted to support smaller organizations and individual voices from smaller countries or marginalized communities within Africa, such as the Africa Digitals Rights Funds. There needs to be more of those. There are also initiatives developing the talent, skills, and interest for digital rights advocacy in the next generation of lawyers, development experts, or young professionals in the domain of public interest tech more broadly. How can we build trust, promote partnership, and enhance regional collaboration among different African stakeholders in the Internet governance ecosystem, including governments, inter-governmental bodies, civil society, industry, media, and academia? The effort has to continue in terms of encouraging dialogue and cooperation, through conferences, forums, summits, etc. Continuing to facilitate those open conversations, knowledge sharing and exchange is crucially important. We must go a step further to ensure that we are not in an echo chamber, preaching to the converted and patting ourselves on the back without doing more to foster relationships with some of the groups that are not traditionally well represented especially in local or regional Internet governance conversations e.g industry, law enforcement or policy-makers. We also need to continue to build the capacity of the most marginalised groups to engage in Internet governance conversations. How can we ensure that marginalized communities, such as women, youth, people with disabilities, and marginalised groups, are included in efforts to promote Internet freedom in Africa? We can advance the involvement of marginalised communities in Internet rights and freedoms advocacy efforts by implementing inclusive policies, promoting digital access and literacy, and addressing the discrimination, harassment, and broader harms that these marginalized groups typically encounter online through effective legal frameworks and mechanisms to promote their safety and protect their rights online. A CIPESA Series 41