At int’l forum on digital platforms in Yaounde: African media regulators strategise to render social media use attractive.

The forum jointly organised by the National Communication Council, NCC of Cameroon and the African Communication Regulation Authorities Network, ACRAN, began yesterday and concludes today November 9. 

Placed under the patronage of the Head of State President Paul Biya, the forum was officially launched by the Minister of Communication, Rene Emmanuel Sadi on behalf of the Prime Minister, Chief Dr Joseph Dion Ngute.

The forum is placed under the theme: “The challenge of social media regulation: modalities of collaboration between African media regulators and digital platforms”.

In his key note remark, the Prime Minister’s representative saluted the initiative of the forum, considered as timely in mitigating the wrongful usage of social media on the continent. 

According to the minister, the advent of social media platforms has brought so much good to the society but not without some negative impacts on its usage. 

“We are quite happy for these communication tools in our country and the rest of the world. It is a lot of positive thing that we have to praise,” the minister said. 

MINCOM boss further stated that “unfortunately there are a lot of defiance nowadays and social media has become a place where people use it for hate speech, fake news and so many other bad things”.

Dignitaries, African media regulatory officials, others in group photo

The PM’s representative equally stressed on the need for the respective regulatory structures to put the digital platforms under scan.   

“It is absolutely necessary for government to regulate and make sure that this innovation that is quite important for all of us, should remain very positive for the society,” Sadi said.  

He then called on the participants of the forum to deliberate and make appropriate proposals to ensure that social media remain a good initiative for the whole world. 

Entre NCC President

According to the NCC president, Joseph Chebongkeng, the forum is very important for media regulators on continent to not only be passive participants, but active to ensure sanity reigns on the different platforms. 

“We don’t want to be passive consumers of social media products that is why we thought it will be important to be active participants in everything that is being done on social media,” Chebongkeng told the press. 

Given the wide nature of the social media, the NCC president said it would be challenging for the media regulators on the continent to act separately.

“By coming together as African regulators, we feel that it is extremely important to mutualise our forces and reason towards the same direction,” 

He also highlight the need for the media regulators to engage communication with the digital platform providers that are represented on the continent, in order to share ideas on how social media contents can be handled. 

Cross view of delegates during opening of international forum

The need for media regulators to be autonomous

Taking the stage to address the participants, the exercising president of ACRAN, who doubles as President of Morocco’s High Authority of Audiovisual Communication, HACA, Latifa Akharbach, stressed on the need for media regulators on the continent to be empowered and made autonomous to better serve their society. 

Emphasised on the need for regulation of digital platforms, the ACRAN president stated that regulating the social media should not be an “option” but an obligation for media regulatory bodies in Africa given the increasing risk of the use of these platforms.

She equally encouraged ACRAN members to pursue continuous dialogue with global digital platforms companies and other stakeholders to make the usage of the platforms safer for netizens.

In addition, Akharbach stressed on the need for the global digital platforms companies to have legally backed representatives in Africa to ensure the dialogue process between regulators and the platforms. 

The two-day forum is marked by a series of panel discussions on issues related to preventing and combat disinformation and hate speech, content policy management for international digital platforms, and ways digital platforms and media regulators can work together to regulate social networks.