Written by ‘Gbenga Sesan This is a guest blog written by the Executive Director of Paradigm Initiative, a key #RestoreDataRights partner from the Nigerian region, emphasising the importance of data governance issues in Africa as outlined in the Restore Data Rights declaration which calls for responsible data use on the continent. On January 1, 2020,…
We had a virtual sit down with Dr Amy Lehman, founder of the Lake Tanganyika Floating Health Clinic, an international organisation whose mission is to address healthcare access and education for isolated communities in the Lake Tanganyika Basin/Great Lakes region in Central Africa.
The Open Institute has today taken a raft of measures to reduce our team’s exposure to COVID-19. Starting today and for the next 30 days, we shall not participate in any physical meetings or activities. We are also implementing a “no travel” policy starting tomorrow for the next 30 days, when the policy will be…
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit our continent, it became apparent that some gaps, particularly the shortage of healthcare workers, existed across different African countries. The Africa CDC PACT Project, a brainchild of the health committee at the African Union (AU), sought to ensure that Africa was not left behind in matters of health. The project…
What a year this has been! For many of us, this year has been an unparalleled horror show one that will not easily be forgotten. For us, this has been a pivotal year – one of the most interesting complexities. On the one hand, 2020 was billed to be the year that we move to…
When we started the Open Institute, we never imagined that it would achieve so much in such a relatively short time. Don’t get us wrong – our ambition was, and still is, humongous. We truly want to see a world where citizens are so active that they tell their governments what to do and how…
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…
In the wake of the COVID 19 pandemic, contact tracing – and the swift actions that governments initially took to take to curb the spread of COVID-19 have thrust the issues of data rights to the fore. Citizens have ceded personal data to states – in many cases unwillingly or without full knowledge of the…
In August 2020, a story went viral about the Choluteca bridge in Honduras. Legend has it that the very well constructed bridge was built in a contract with the Japanese government in 1996. In 1998, when the bridge was commissioned for use, Honduras was hit by Hurricane Mitch, which caused considerable damage to the nation…
On 5th May 2020, the Open Institute supported The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and World Health Organisation (WHO) along with SLoCaT Partnership, The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), Walk 21 and other high-level partners to convene a half-day digital expert group meeting to share experiences,…
