Minister of Communications, Digital Know-how and Innovation, Samuel Narty George, has issued a robust warning to the world’s tech giants concerning the systematic exploitation of Africa’s digital sources, describing the phenomenon as a harmful wave of “new colonization” throughout Africa.
In an interview with Adom Information after addressing MPs, diplomats and coverage specialists on the 4th African Inter-Parliamentary Convention on Household Sovereignty and Values held on the grounds of Parliament, MP Ningo Prampuram argued that Africa should urgently get up, shrink its ranks and seize absolute possession and regulatory management over sovereign knowledge property earlier than it’s utterly conquered by exterior company pursuits.
The Minister drew historic parallels between transatlantic slavery, territorial imperialism, and fashionable digital exploitation, noting that the fashionable actions of multinational expertise corporations precisely replicate the methods used to beat the continent centuries in the past.
He warned that structural fragmentation inside Africa’s regulatory frameworks makes the continent weak to overseas knowledge assortment syndicates.
Sam George uncovered the strategic technique of exploitation to the Pan-African delegation, claiming:
“I feel it is just because the divided persons are the conquered individuals. The story of colonization adopted the identical situation: communities turned in opposition to themselves, aiding every kind of barbarism, and Ghana is main the reparations motion. However even whereas we’re speaking about reparations for slavery, we now have to watch out that new colonization and buying and selling of digital property from Africa would not begin occurring,” he warned.
The minister instantly accused international tech corporations of extracting huge quantities of nationwide knowledge with out due knowledgeable consent or structural financial compensation to host nations.
The communications minister refused to assuage the nation’s grievances with tender diplomatic phrases, saying the unauthorized siphoning of economic, behavioral and biometric knowledge from African customers amounted to outright theft.
He referred to as for a direct unified continental coverage framework to cease illicit cross-border knowledge transfers and pressure international expertise syndicates to retailer and course of African knowledge inside native jurisdictions and on indigenous phrases.
“That is why I feel it is essential for us as an African continent to take a transparent and unequivocal place that we now have to cease the theft of African knowledge, or to place it diplomatically, the theft of African knowledge. African knowledge is being stolen by massive expertise corporations with out recourse to African governments,” he countered.
The minister’s warning comes at a crucial time as Ghana is aggressively positioning itself because the West African subregion’s main digital hub, backed by aggressive investments in state-run knowledge facilities and knowledge safety compliance.
Sam George reminded Parliaments that true sovereignty within the twenty first century can’t be achieved if African nations stay passive customers and digitally depending on overseas software program empires.
He concluded his remarks with an impassioned name to motion, calling on African governments, parliaments and regional blocs to shortly construct a protection coalition to safe the continent’s digital borders and safe the way forward for Africa as a complete.
“And we now have to get up to that and begin saying that our knowledge can solely be used on our personal foundation. We have now to personal our knowledge. And I hope we come collectively to combat these forces which might be attempting to destroy us,” Sam George mentioned forcefully.
