- South Africa is the leading country with Internet freedom in Africa in 2024.
- Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Rwanda have the least internet freedom in Africa, with higher violations of user rights.
Sandwiched between draconian laws and dictatorship, Africa is home to some of the most oppressive regimes in the world—clamping down on human rights through speech and media censorship, crackdown on dissenters, and government critics remains a critical concern in the 21st century.
Living in fear of a regime’s apathy towards restrictive internet accessibility that limits freedom of open communication and criticism is a medieval affair that should be a thing of the past. Some state-owned telecommunication companies are fond of doubling the cost of internet services, thus limiting access to social media spaces, which are deemed digital media platforms.
Freedom House, through its comprehensive assessment and valuation of the annual Freedom on Net report encompassing 72 countries across the world, brings to the limelight the status of internet freedom and accessibility in a selected number of African countries.
Freedom House evaluates the status of each country’s internet usability through a set of modalities that determine violations of user rights, accessibility obstacles, and limits on content, which then aggregates to the total score and status on internet freedom. The outcome determines status, as whether free, partly or not free.
A country with a score above 70 is considered internet-free; 40 to 69 is partly free, while a score below 40 is not free. This makes South Africa the only African country with commendable internet freedom with a score of 74. South Africa scored 19 on obstacles to access and 29 and 26 on both limits on content and violations of user rights, respectively.
Ghana, Kenya, Zambia, and Tunisia are making strides about internet freedom, with both of them scoring above 60. However, a glaring outcome places Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Rwanda in the spotlight, as all of them show diminished internet freedom and potential user rights. Both of them scored 28, 28, 27, and 36, respectively.
Internet Freedom by Country (Africa) in 2024
