Sub-Saharan countries are undergoing an unprecedented digital transformation. Digital technology is revolutionizing industries, governments, economies, and societies. However, this transformation also brings risks of inequality, repression, and political and social instability. Importantly, there is growing recognition that digital technologies are being used by governments to repress, censor, surveil, and mislead their citizens. Digital tools can be used to accelerate and scale tactics that undermine the ability of citizens to exercise their basic rights and to hold their governments accountable. While citizens and civil society leverage digital tools such as social media and private messaging to communicate, organize, and advocate, repressive governments and non-state actors are innovating digital responses just as quickly. Thus, supporting robust digital ecosystems that are open, inclusive, secure, and beneficial to all is more important than ever.

In 2021, the Conflict, Peace-Building, and Governance Division in the Africa Bureau (AFR/SD/CPG) commissioned a Landscape Assessment to better understand the links between digital development and digital repression in sub-Saharan Africa and develop strategies to counter such repression. Primary findings of the assessment pointed to a lack of literature that addresses the benefits and the risks of digital development and a similar lack of solutions to this vexing issue. There is a need and an opportunity to proactively design USAID digital programming with an integrated awareness of digital repression and privacy risks. In order to develop potential solutions, it is necessary to analyze the range of digital interventions being deployed in sub-Saharan Africa.