The SOS Coalition continues with consultations for ACHPR Resolution 631

The SOS Support Public Broadcasting Coalition, with the support of UNESCO, continues to advance its continental consultations on the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR)’s Resolution 631. The Resolution is aimed at assessing the concept of public service content in the digital era in order to develop guidelines to ensure a public interest element for all platforms operating in Africa.

As part of this work, in February, SOS convened a consultation session in Pretoria at the International Conference on Digital Platforms Governance, in partnership with Moxii Africa, UNESCO, and the African Communication Regulation Authorities Network (ACRAN). Again, SOS had another session in Kenya, at the Africa Editors Congress, in Partnership with Moxii Africa, The African Editors Forum and UNESCO.

International Conference on Digital Platforms Governance

The aim of the Pretoria consultation was to engage African regulators and get their views on what should be included in the Guidelines for Resolution 630 and 631. This engagement marked an important step in the process and reinforced the importance of collaborative, inclusive approaches to platform governance across the continent.

Regulators reaffirmed the importance of the Resolutions and their support while emphasizing the need for the Guidelines to be practical, implementable and responsive to national and regional regulatory realities.

Regulators noted that individual countries are often unable to effectively hold global digital platforms accountable on their own. As a result, stronger collaboration across African regulatory bodies was therefore identified as critical to ensuring consistent oversight and effective implementation of the Guidelines.

The regulators emphasized that this process presents an opportunity to develop context- specific and African driven digital instruments rather than simply importing regulatory models from the Global North. The Guidelines were therefore seen as a platform to articulate shared African values, realities, and policy approaches in addressing digital platform governance.

African Editors Congress Engagement

During the Africa Editors Congress, SOS co-hosted a workshop with the objective to understand editors’ current pressing challenges related to fact-checking and platform accountability as well as production, distribution and access to public-interest content with the aim to gather their perspectives on how ACHPR Resolutions 630 and 631 can most effectively respond to these challenges.

The consultation provided African editors with an opportunity to contribute their perspectives to the Resolutions. Led by The African Editors Forum, this consultation created a platform for editors to engage on the key issues that should be incorporated into the guidelines to ensure that appropriate guardrails are established to safeguard the future of public interest journalism in an evolving digital environment.

Through these consultations, SOS reaffirmed its commitment to collaborative, multi-stakeholder approaches that strengthen access to information and the sustainability of public service content and media, across Africa.

For more information contact: 

Uyanda Siyotula 

SOS National Coordinator 

060 691 2462