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African governments increase demand for Facebook user information [Hi-Tech]

The Morning Call

It doesn’t feel good when someone invades your privacy especially when your activities online are being spied on.

It is worse when your government does the spying.

Unfortunately, this path is being sought after by governments of some African countries who have requested details about some social media users.

A new report published in July indicates that African governments have requested for more user data from Facebook, Google and Twitter in 2016.

The report released by CIPESA – a leading African ICT policy research center – says 18 African governments had requested for information on over a hundred people on Facebook alone.

The leading countries are Sudan which made 35 requests for information on 39 Facebook users between 2013 and 2016.

This is followed by Egypt and South Africa which both made 33 requests.

However, the Nigerian government made only 16 requests but wanted information on 119 Facebook users. It was also high for Tunisia which made 5 requests for 52 user information.

These figures were aggregated by Facebook, and the numbers were much less in 2013.

Facebook says it complied with some of the requests.

It is a similar story for Google which had 10 African countries requesting information about online users.

Kenya made the highest number requests to Google followed by South Africa and Nigeria.

Out of Kenya’s 21 requests related to 32 user accounts, Google says it rejected all but eight requests made relating to 11 user accounts.

For Twitter, only five African countries made requests including Egypt, South Sudan, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa.

The Morning Call

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The Morning Call

The Morning Call is about you. We want to share your opinions on our programme. If you want to contribute to The Morning Call, here are the best ways to get in touch : For more details on how to contribute, click here.