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WhatsApp’s new Terms & Conditions: What they mean to us

Eight years after it gained popularity in Kenya, WhatsApp is now not only owned by Facebook but has more features added to it making it more appealing for masses and increasing its penetration in most countries worldwide. With the new ownership came new terms and conditions in 2012 which most users agreed to without reading. A new set of terms and conditions were unveiled by the company early this year which caused quite a stir online. Data protection experts, governments and civil societies went up in arms with the new terms and the extent in which individual and business data is collected from the platform. At the Open Institute, we convened an informal lunch time chat to discuss the new terms and conditions and to try and explain what the impact of them would be to the everyday citizen.

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14 Countries, 1 Event: Open Data Day Africa 2021

The Open Institute on the 6th of March convened virtual webinars across various African countries to commemorate the global celebration of the Open Data Day. This year’s event was themed “Data for Equal Development”, and discussions centred around the need to promote the conversation on data governance in the COVID-19 context, a topic that inspired the #RestoreDataRights movement that seeks to promote transparent, accountable and inclusive data governance in Africa.

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The data collection and digitization process for Citizen Generated Data in Elgeyo Marakwet

Deep in the heart of the county of champions, in the scenic and partly remote wards of Arror, Tambach, Kayego and Kaptarakwa, the activities for the citizen-led household census in Elgeyo Marakwet County are underway,  targeting data collection in 101,000 households. The training of enumerators,  data collection and data entry activities have been taking place…

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Design considerations for the citizen-driven census in Elgeyo Marakwet County

In our work in citizen-generated data, we have had experiences that have demonstrated that the results of our projects are usually high-impact and long-lasting. This inspires us to keep working with citizens empowering them to use data to drive change within their communities. When citizens understand the power of data, they turn into data champions…

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Launching a movement for transparent, inclusive and accountable data governance: Introducing the #RestoreDataRights Declaration

The #RestoreDataRights movement comprises seven partners across Africa; Paradigm Initiative (Nigeria), Africa Digital Rights Hub (Ghana), Tom Moultrie (Professor of Demography, University of Cape Town) (South Africa), Media Rights Agenda (Nigeria), CIPESA (Uganda), Open Institute (Kenya) and Amnesty International (Kenya). It sprang from discussions on how data used as part of the COVID-19 response should…

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A Restore Data Rights Initiative for Africa

The Restore Data Rights initiative was born out of necessity; we realised that personal digital rights were being exploited with the COVID-19 pandemic as a catalyst. We presently comprise of six partners across Africa; Paradigm Initiative (Nigeria), Africa Digital Rights Hub (Ghana), Tom Moultrie (Professor of Demography, University of Cape Town) (South Africa), Media Rights…

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