“There is no full and complete digital sovereignty without both a trusted cyber space and a local cultural and informational offer, credible and likely to find its place and its audiences in the new global digital space”, stressed, Wednesday in Abidjan, the president of the High Authority for Audiovisual Communication (HACA), Latifa Akharbach.
Speaking during the work of the international symposium on the common approach of the countries of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) in terms of the regulation of digital platforms, organized by the Ivorian HACA, Ms. Akharbach, also current president of the of the African Communication Regulatory Bodies (ACRAN), notably affirmed in this regard that the construction of African cultural and informational sovereignty is a multi-sectoral and urgent project, in particular because of the accelerated pace of changes experienced by media ecosystems.
In addition to setting up a real capacity to produce various content, she added, this project encompasses many other issues such as respect for copyright, protection of the public or the development of an African audiovisual and cinematographic creation focused on diversity, says a press release from the HACA.
Concerning the procedures of regulation of the global platforms to be established on the continent, the president of ACRAN notably affirmed that “the regulation of these platforms, as it has been done elsewhere, will have to impose on them an obligation to support the cultural, media and local creatives.
But, she concluded, “this will not respond to the central problem which is that of the creation by the public authorities of the continent, of the conditions necessary for the construction of viable African media and cultural ecosystems”.
In addition to the presidents of the twelve member bodies of the platform of audiovisual regulators of WAEMU countries, the work of this symposium brought together several other African media regulators, representatives of global digital platforms such as Meta, Tiktok and Google , the representative of the WAEMU Commission, as well as the President of ACRAN and a representative of the French-speaking network of regulators (REFRAM).