Accountability

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WhatsApp’s new Terms & Conditions: What they mean to us

Eight years after it gained popularity in Kenya, WhatsApp is now not only owned by Facebook but has more features added to it making it more appealing for masses and increasing its penetration in most countries worldwide. With the new ownership came new terms and conditions in 2012 which most users agreed to without reading. A new set of terms and conditions were unveiled by the company early this year which caused quite a stir online. Data protection experts, governments and civil societies went up in arms with the new terms and the extent in which individual and business data is collected from the platform. At the Open Institute, we convened an informal lunch time chat to discuss the new terms and conditions and to try and explain what the impact of them would be to the everyday citizen.

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A Restore Data Rights Initiative for Africa

The Restore Data Rights initiative was born out of necessity; we realised that personal digital rights were being exploited with the COVID-19 pandemic as a catalyst. We presently comprise of six partners across Africa; Paradigm Initiative (Nigeria), Africa Digital Rights Hub (Ghana), Tom Moultrie (Professor of Demography, University of Cape Town) (South Africa), Media Rights…

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Submissions on the Data Protection Civil Registration Regulations (2020) in Kenya

The Ministry of ICT issued an invitation to members of the public to comment on the data protection regulations on civil registrations through the press. We submitted our comments, which you can read in detail here. We essentially raised five points of concern with the regulations: issues around the operation of consent under the Regulations,…

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Players or Spectators – 6 Observations of CSO participation in OGP

Our founder, Al Kags is happy to publish Players or Spectators – Observations on CSO Participation in the Open Government Partnership, a culmination of a study that he conducted while interning at OpentheGovernment.org in August and September this year. “The experience that I gained at OpenTheGovernment.org under the guidance of Patrice McDermott and her colleagues…

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Give Your Input to Kenya’s Draft OGP Action Plan

Kenya is one of the 65 participating countries of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), a multilateral initiative that seeks to make governments more open, accountable and responsive to citizens. Overseen by representatives from governments and civil society organisations, the multi-stakeholder effort aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption and harness…

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