The Cancellation of RightsCon 2026 is an Attack on African Digital Civic Space

Press Statement

Harare, 08 May 2026

Issued by: Magamba Network, JamiiAfrica and Baraza Media Lab

We, the undersigned organisations, Magamba Network, JamiiAfrica, and Baraza Media Lab, condemn in the strongest possible terms the cancellation of RightsCon 2026 and the transnational repression that caused it.

RightsCon 2026, convened by Access Now and scheduled to take place in Lusaka from 5 to 8 May, remains the largest annual gathering on human rights in the digital age. This edition was set to bring together more than 2,600 in-person participants and 1,100 online, representing over 150 countries and 750 institutions. For African civil society, it represented a rare and consequential opportunity to centre African voices, experiences, and solutions in global conversations about platform accountability, digital repression, and the future of independent digital infrastructure.

According to Access Now, the cancellation was driven by foreign interference. On 27 April, a day after the Zambian government publicly endorsed the conference, officials informed the RightsCon team that diplomats from the People’s Republic of China were pressuring the Government of Zambia to exclude Taiwanese civil society participants from attending in person. When Access Now refused to moderate content or exclude communities at risk, the government announced a “postponement” through state-owned media at 9:33pm on a public holiday, without prior consultation or formal notice to the organisers. 

Our organisations had prepared a powerful satellite event, Reclaiming the Digital Commons for Africa: Platform Accountability, Digital Authoritarianism and the Future of Independent Infrastructure, designed to convene practitioners, activists, technologists, and community organisers from across the continent. The session was to explore how Big Tech shapes disinformation ecosystems, how African governments deploy internet shutdowns and surveillance to restrict civic space, how Gen Z is fighting back and how African-led infrastructure solutions are building more resilient and sovereign digital futures. 

That conversation will not take place in Lusaka this week, not because our communities lack the will, the knowledge, or the urgency, but because an African government yielded to external pressure and chose to silence it. What makes this particularly alarming is the nature of the interference. This was not merely a domestic political decision. It was an act of transnational repression, the use of diplomatic leverage by one government to suppress the participation of civil society from another in a global human rights forum. This sets a dangerous precedent. If foreign powers can determine who may attend, and which topics may be discussed, at gatherings of this kind, then no civil society convening on the African continent is safe from external interference.

This cancellation lands at a moment when African digital civic space is already under mounting pressure. Governments across the continent are enacting surveillance legislation, conducting internet shutdowns, and criminalising online speech. Online movements, digital rights activists, youth hubs and civil society face an increasingly restricted operating environment. The cancellation of RightsCon does not exist in isolation. It is part of this pattern.

We stand in full solidarity with Access Now, with the Taiwanese activists and all other comrades whose safety and participation were used as bargaining chips, with the thousands of attendees whose plans were upended, and with Zambian civil society partners who continue to operate in an increasingly difficult environment ahead of the country’s August 2026 general election.

We call on the Government of the Republic of Zambia to account publicly and honestly for this decision, to acknowledge the role of external diplomatic pressure in the cancellation, and to reaffirm its commitment to an open digital civic space in which African citizens, movements and civil society can convene freely.

We call on African governments to resist foreign interference in their domestic civic space and to uphold the right of civil society to organise, speak, and assemble freely, both online and in person.

We call on Access Now and the broader RightsCon community to continue this critical work. The integrity with which they handled an impossible situation, refusing to moderate content or exclude communities under pressure, is a model for all of us.

The conversations that were to happen in Lusaka this week are not going away. The challenges of Big Tech polluting our information ecosystem and of digital repression by African states are not going away. Neither are we! We will continue the fight for digital democracy on the continent – where the online space is free and all voices are equal!

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