Big Data, Internet Privacy and the Vulnerabilities of the African Regulatory Landscape

Social media generates massive amount of big data from users, the penetration of these platforms in Africa creates meaningful insights around customer needs and behaviour from the data. This helps to create new businesses that rebalance the technology and wealth gap in the continent. With every gigabytes of data generated brings about exploitation of customer data. Data Privacy becomes a focal point of concern. The global approaches to privacy for the users of social media platforms is still evolving but two jurisdictions have set a standard. The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Californian Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) have provisions that are built on sustaining consumer consent and enabling consumers to be forgotten or have their consented data deleted at their own request. More so the exponential growth of the internet in Africa highlights the explosion of big data and there is a need to study its regulatory approaches in relation to the global best practices symbolized by the GDPR and the CCPA. The Paper reviews the African regulatory landscape and its approach to Big Data and possible vulnerable angles that exposes data of Africans on these social media platforms. It is clear that in spite of a continental treaty and a reasonable number of African countries with Data Privacy laws, these laws are in most of the countries either not built on strong legal grounds or lack an independent enforcement mechanism. Therefore the African approach leaves a lot of open issues and there is a need for a continental consensus on the best approach that will push through national legislations crept on a unifying continental model. Keywords: Big Data, Privacy, Regulatory, Social Media, Data analytics, Guidelines, rights DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/12-17-14 Publication date:June 30th 202

Regulating and Taxing the Big Tech Companies: A Slippery Slope for Africa?

There has been a growing concern across the globe on the activities of Big Tech companies and the platforms they deploy. This Paper reviews the United States and European experiences, while also providing an African perspective. It is unclear how Africa should proceed with its regulatory oversight of the Big Tech companies and subsequently tax them appropriately. Doubtlessly, the African continent lacks the policy cohesion of Europe, the cross national enforcement capabilities of the United States or even the capacity to monitor that actual activities on these platforms. Therefore, this Paper is of the view that Africa must segment the activities of the Big Tech companies based on both the thematic functions of their platforms and the regulatory areas they impact in the countries they operate in. In the end the key question, which is also an expression of a deep seated fear, is on whether this path can be a slippery slope that will capsize even the fringe advantages and usefulness of these platforms on the African digital ecosystem. Keywords: Big Tech, Regulatory, Platforms, taxation, technologies, communications DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/13-20-12 Publication date:October 31st 202