Citizens’ rights and inputs take centre stage in strategies being developed by African countries to secure their cyberspaces, Ghana’s Ambassador to Mali, Major-General (Rtd) Francis Adu-Amanfoh has said.
The diplomat, who is also the Chairman of the Africa Cyber Security and Digital Rights Organisation (ACDRO), said the citizenry were the key stakeholders of the cyberspace and must be at the centre of efforts to protect them.
Condemning the recent shutdown of internet in some African countries, he said “Citizens’ rights in cyberspace must be entrenched in cyber security strategies and due process must be used in any shutdown if necessary.”
Major-General (Rtd) Adu-Amanfoh was speaking at the 2nd Civil Society Cyber security workshop organised by ACDRO yesterday in Accra on the theme “Making our National Cyber Security Policy and Strategy Citizen –centric.”
The event afforded participants, drawn from civil society groups, academia and media, the opportunity to increase their knowledge on cyber security matters to enable them promote the digital rights of the citizenry.
Major-General (Rtd) Adu-Amanfoh said aside the citizenry, other stakeholders including the academia should be engaged in the development and implementation of strategies in addition to the adoption of the right critical information infrastructure and risk mitigating measures.
“The totality of coordinated communications, information sharing, security awareness, education and cooperation amongst stakeholders constitutes a security strategy”, he said.
Ms Lea Kaspar, Executive Director of Global Partners Digital (GPD), an international non-governmental organisation that champions digital rights, said the lack of robust cyber security measures would result in privacy breach.
She said it was for this reason that her outfit, apart from awareness creation and advocacy, was supporting capacity building programmes introduced last year for Commonwealth countries and urged member countries to be committed.
BY JONATHAN DONKOR
