Koliwe Majama

In an increasingly digitised world our personal data is collected and used by different public and private sector parties to enhance customer experiences and service provision. However there are piling concerns over the manner in which law enforcement and state security agencies collect and manipulate some of the data in the name of tackling crime.

Read the article for more on the calls for more accountable use of personal data by state security and law enforcement agencies.

This article was commissioned and first published by DW Akademie, as part of the Media and Information Literacy week commemorations. Media and Information Literacy is essential for citizens to claim their human rights, especially in the digital sphere. Zimbabwean digital rights activist Koliwe Majama explores the barriers against MIL in Africa. Although comparatively lower than in […]

Zimbabwe is set to commemorate the International Day for Universal Access to Information on the 28th of September 2020. This comes at a time when the country, alongside the rest of the world, is faced with a health pandemic that has moved citizens’ daily communication, education, work, trade, and access to basic services from physical interactions to, mostly, online interactions.

Koliwe Majama was a panelist at a discussion on Media and Information Literacy at the 7th online session of the Global Media Forum. The panel had a comprehensive discussion on the importance of media and information literacy to curb misinformation and fake news, especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. In her contribution, Koliwe Majama called attention to the need to equip citizens with media and information literacy so that they will be in a position to identify and evaluate the credibility of media content and distinguish it from misinformation and dis-information; identify potential abusers, technology spies and hackers; and understand privacy implications when using and sharing data with any third parties.

Koliwe Majama gave the keynote address on the State of the Internet at the 2020 Hub Unconference, an annual new media and journalism conference hosted by the Magamba Network. In her address, Koliwe Majama highlights the need for the full adoption and implementation of internet rights and freedoms at a time when most of our […]

What do you do when your government shuts down the internet? How can we as civil society respond to such restrictions? This was the focus of this year’s Disco-tech event, organised by Hivos/Digital Defenders Partnership, the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), Columbia Global Freedom of Expression, Columbia Global Centers Tunis and other partners on 10 June, the evening before RightsCon 2019. Read the […]

Its important to ask, does Africa have a digitalisation agenda? Who set it? What is the strategy? Who is the gatekeeper? These are the crucial questions APCs Koliwe Majama posed at the start of her keynote lecture, delivered at the Digitalisation in Africa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Technology, Development and Justice conference at the University of […]

In this research Koliwe and co-researcher, Chenai Chair document the lived realities and effects of Zimababwe’s digital ID system among marginalised communities

Koliwe facilitated a two-day Gender Equality and Inclusion workshop, in December 2019 The workshop was organised by Hivos Southern Africa for its grantees of the Resource of Open Minds grantees project and are based in three Southern African countries Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe. The main objectives of the workshop included: Shared and documented knowledge of gender […]

Koliwe Majama is the overall organiser for the African School on Internet Governance and is responsible for outreach, partnership building, participant selection, the AfriSIG website, fundraising and overall logistics. She is also the key liaison with participants and assists on the schools strategy and future development.

On Dec 3 2018, Koliwe supported by USAID and Counterpart International among many other organisations launched her first research project ‘Pitfalls of the internet as a developmental tool’ which seeks to show how the internet has become a political weapon to infringe on the rights of marginal sexual and gender communities rather than a developmental […]

In September 2018, Koliwe attended the ‘Digitization in Africa’ conference held by the University in Tubingen in Germany to give a talk and share her thoughts on the topic. As part of a number of selected presenters, Koliwe gave an inspirational talk questioning, ‘Does Africa have a digitization agenda? Who set it? What is the […]

Digital Rights and Policy Specialist, Koliwe Majama is featured in a recently released documentary entitled Media Capture in Zimbabwe: Fact or Fiction?  which probes the independence of the mainstream media in Zimbabwe dating back to before Independence in 1980. In the documentary produced by the Media Alliance of Zimbabwe and Content Creators Network ZW, Majama explains how […]

Zimbabweans are learning to utilise social media to speak about their repressive government and fight for better policies.

In an episode of The Breakdown, a program hosted by BBC Africa, Koliwe Majama is featured offering input on the impact of disinformation and misinformation on our understanding of the Covid-19 pandemic.

At this year’s Global Media Forum (GMF) 2020 sponsored by DW’s Akademie, Koliwe and three other panelists spoke on the increasing importance of media and information literacy as a critical tool in this digital age amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Among other issues Koliwe highlighted the need for “community networks” in a continent where many African […]

Zimbabwes leading civil society groups have petitioned the High Court seeking to block a lower court order requiring Econet Wireless to hand over its subscribers information.

It has, of necessity, become imperative that women get to the fore of the debate on cyber-security instead of leaving it solely to governments and the financial/business sector as is the case in national and regional governance forums,