The provisional report on the national and supranational legal framework relating to the resumption and exploitation of media and artistic content in West Africa will be presented this Thursday, in Dakar, during a workshop organized by the Panos Africa Institute of the West, in partnership with the UNESCO Sahel Regional Office.
This workshop marks an important step in efforts to regulate interactions between digital content creators and large technology platforms, commonly known as GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft). The main objective is to “represent the provisional conclusions, collect recommendations and propose advocacy actions for a reform of the national and supranational legal framework”, in order to better protect digital content creators and their rights.
This meeting is part of the project “Meeting the challenge of legal security of the media in the face of new digital challenges in Senegal and Ivory Coast”, led by the Panos Institute in collaboration with UNESCO. This initiative aims to strengthen the viability of West African media, in the face of increased competition from digital platforms such as TikTok, Opera News and GAFAM, which aggregate and distribute content without financial compensation for their producers.
The press release received by PressAfrik underlines “the urgency of a review of the legal provisions relating to copyright and related rights”. The memo calls for reforms that would allow creators to demand fair and equitable payments from the platforms exploiting their content.
-Press associations have also initiated advocacy with the UEMOA and ECOWAS Commissions to establish a sub-regional legal framework, promoting a balanced partnership between digital creators and GAFAM, which currently dominate the advertising market in line. This situation endangers “the future of African media and free and plural information in Africa”.
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