‘Slap in the face’: Zambia’s RightsCon collapse a warning for Africa’s digital rights (Part 1)

May 2026 was set to mark a milestone as Zambia hosted the world’s premier digital rights conference for the first time in southern Africa, just months before its elections. Instead, the government delivered a masterclass in censorship by pulling the plug on RightsCon, compromising flag­­ship World Press Freedom Day celebrations in Lusaka and issuing a stark reminder of the fragility of digital rights and media freedom on the continent and around the globe.

After more than a year of preparation and consultations, the abrupt backtrack exposed the transactional nature of modern digital sovereignty. It forced a profound fracture in the community that seeks to close digital divides and entrench human rights into the UN’s Global Digital Compact.

The 1,100 virtual delegates and 2,600 in-person attendees, many of whom were mid-transit, were blindsided. Adjacent events planned alongside RightsCon, including the World Press Freedom Day programme, were downgraded, and solidarity boycotts and withdrawals followed.

Organiser Access Now has pointed specifically to China’s hidden hand in leaning on Lusaka because Taiwanese representatives were due to attend the conference in person – ironically at the Chinese-built Mulungushi International Conference Centre, as Beijing fiercely guards its “One China ­policy” amid its expanding infrastructural presence.

Responding to queries this week, the Zambian government conceded that “diplomatic sensitivities” were among the considerations, along with “national interest and security concerns”. However, to attribute the reasons for “postponing” the conference to external Chinese influence were “mischaracterisations”.

Read more

RightsCon: Zambia’s ‘diplomatic sensitivities’, digital rights and superpower in Africa (Part 2)

May 31, 2026

Anja Kovacs, senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance and Innovation (CIGI), struggled to comprehend the news when informed of the “postponement” while preparing to travel from Mauritius to Lusaka.

“It was a bit like seeing the photo of the tsunami on the front page back in December 2004 and not understanding what I was seeing. I had to gather my bearings; it was very disorienting,” she said, hav­­ing attended many RightsCons since the event’s inception 15 years ago, in­cluding in Taiwan last year.

Stifling civil space

As with other organisations, RightsCon was a critical event on the CIGI’s calendar. Delegates planned to launch key results from its Supporting Safer Digital Spaces programme, which offers an unprecedented quantitative analysis of the gendered impact of online harms and technology-facilitated gender-based violence in 18 countries.

Toby Mendel, executive director of the Canada-based Centre for Law and Democracy, called the action “absolutely unprecedented” and a severe disruptive blow to civil society. Although the cancellation brought immense material losses – amounting to “millions of dollars” – the human rights implications were far more devastating.

“I won’t say that no conference has ever been cancelled ... but never anything that was as blatantly political and abusive as this. This is a very, very big deal... It is a massive slap in the face... for freedom of assembly, primarily, that’s the most directly engaged right, but obviously other rights like freedom of association and freedom of expression,” said Mendel.

Churchill Otieno, president of the African Editors Forum, called the decision “very disempowering and, to be frank, very disrespectful”. Based in Kenya, Otieno made his way to Lusaka regardless, feeling like he had a “split personality”.

The forum boycotted Lusaka events in solidarity, but the Africa Media Convention, of which Otieno was the outgoing steering committee chairperson, convened out of organisational necessity. The psychological impact among delegations was heavy, marked by confusion over revised agendas created on the fly and speakers dropping out, leaving delegates far from “being in their best frame of mind”, said Otieno.

Zimbabwe-based Tabani Moyo, regional secretariat director of the Media Institute of Southern Africa, warned that these heavy-handed actions could spread “like wildfire” to other African countries, which may now feel emboldened to suppress activities that may be deemed politically sensitive. Zambia had chosen political survival over short-term economic gain in the capital city, he said.

“The host country understood the consequences of what was at play... of failure to comply. It thought of the essence of losing power in the whole broader scheme of the chess game.”

Moyo, who travelled to Lusaka to participate in a World Press Freedom Day panel on digital transformation, AI and information integrity, said the fallout extended directly to digital rights and technological dependency, as the supply side of telecoms in the African context is increasingly reliant on Chinese infrastructure.

China has been steadily increasing its influence through digital infrastructure and surveillance spyware.

International Media Support was among the organisations that cancelled its Lusaka programme, where it had scheduled many other engagements besides RightsCon, dealing a blow to regional organising.

South Africa-based chairperson Guy Berger said that the block on RightsCon also put the brakes on critical planning sessions for the African Alliance for Access to Data guidelines, of which he is convenor. The human rights arm of the AU is expected to adopt the guidelines in October.

The disruption occurred amid a serious continental data extraction process, Berger also noted.

“Reputationally, the [Zambian] state suffered immensely,” he said, adding that it had set back critical discussions and drawn widespread civil society condemnations.

Berger noted that before organisers called out China’s hidden hand, there was “plausible” speculation that the US could have been the pressure point, given that the Trump administration opposes advocacy that seeks big tech accountability and limits on American companies involved in AI.

He further pointed to the timing, since the US had been in a tussle with copper-rich Zambia over a health package that America had reportedly made conditional on data access rights and preferential mineral access in the African country.

“Although the main foreign pressure turns out to have been China, the international tech stance of Washington likely meant an absence of US counterpressure to Beijing,” Berger said.

One step forward, three steps back

Elaborating on comments in DW Akademie, Moyo described a “one step forward, three steps backwards” approach to digital and media rights that was typical of many southern African countries.

On one hand, in Reporters Without Borders’ latest World Press Freedom Index, Zambia’s rating has improved from 82 to 77, attributed in part to President Hakainde Hichilema’s reformist government since 2021. Hichilema had also accepted media self-regulation as the way forward.

On the other, Zambia has been implementing stringent cyber-regulations ahead of highly contested elections in August. These regulations were red-flagged by the Committee to Protect Journalists in the days leading up to the Lusaka events.

What happens next

As civil society takes stock of lessons learnt from the Zambia snub, Mendel warned that it would inevitably restrict future civil society spaces across Africa and could induce institutional caution and self-censorship.

“As a destination for conferences, people will think more carefully about having events in Africa. It probably has also scored a big win [for China] in the sense that it was able to sort of flick a switch, almost, in another country and cancel.”

Despite the setback, Berger maintained that it would be wrong to conclude digital rights are a “dead duck” in Africa, or that the cancellation signalled a permanent erosion of digital rights debates in Zambia. He noted that Zambia was reported to be following the example of Ghana by rejecting the US demand for health data in exchange for aid.

Berger foresaw that the digital rights agenda and struggle against surveillance, cybersecurity overreach and online abuse would continue at other gatherings.

Upcoming events include the Forum on Internet Freedom in Africa in Mauritius in September, Unesco’s Global Conference on Access to Information in Sierra Leone in the same month, and the UN’s Internet Governance Forum in Kenya in December.

But there is no time for complacency. Otieno challenged the AU, which has not publicly condemned Zambia, to show greater resolve.

“Clearly, the AU needs to be a lot more forceful in protecting Africa’s agency on these matters,” he said.

Moyo warned that digital rights could not be separated from broader freedoms and needed to be defended with consistent global standards. To stop authoritarian strategies from spreading, he recommended that civil society adopt a multipronged approach: actively engage in restrictive spaces, leverage available resources and build broad global coalitions to resist ­censorship.

“What will be useful is to set standards for upcoming interventions,” Moyo said.

“Because in most of these cases, when we cede space, it’s difficult to reclaim it.” DM

China’s extension of soft-power efforts in Africa

In terms of media influence, China’s soft-power tactics in Africa date back at least a decade, as tracked by Herman Wasserman, the Centre for Information Integrity in Africa’s director, in various research studies.

The latest in 2022, co-authored with Dani Madrid-Morales, indicated that although China had struggled to build traction with African audiences via its state-owned news media, “those who say that they consume Chinese media are more likely to hold a more positive view towards China”. This finding provided a clue to China’s persistence in pushing soft-power tactics.

According to a 2019 Reporters Without Borders (RSF) report, China’s Pursuit of a New World Media Order,” the Chinese Communist Party has invested heavily in the region’s news outlets, media advertising and training for African journalists to promote its narratives

In 2023, the Chinese state news agency Xinhua formed partnerships with several Zambian media outlets, exposing a new African audience to Beijing’s propaganda.

Ratcheting up efforts beyond soft power in Zambia in 2025, RSF described an “unprecedented SLAPP tactic” by Beijing to silence critics when the Chinese Chamber of Commerce obtained a gagging order to prevent the airing of a News Diggers! Documentary detailing the negative consequences of China’s commercial presence in Zambia. China: The Good, the Bad and the Dangerous was aired two months later, after the order was revoked.

China placed 177th out of 180 countries in the latest RSF World Press Freedom Index.

Janet Heard is contracted with the Centre for Information Integrity in Africa (CINIA).

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.