African countries called upon to redefine Africa’s digital age narrative

The Third Ordinary Session of the African Union (AU) Specialized Committee (STC) on Communication and Information Technology (ICT) urged the AU and its member states to jointly address some of the challenges of the digital age. African countries and pan-African institutions were called upon to build a continental cybersecurity guard, reach consensus on an integrated connectivity roadmap, and create efficient communication strategies to bring the AU closer to the African civil society and the general public.

Moctar Yedaly, Head of Information Society of the AU’s Department of Information and Energy, stressed the importance of redefining ‘the narrative of our mother continent in this digital age where information and different kinds of content can be produced and distributed to a worldwide audience in real-time’. He added that African communication and ICT should co-operate to make the most of the existing traditional and digital communication tools and channels ‘to engage with our people in Africa, in the Diaspora and throughout the world’.