The Global Network Initiative (GNI) is pleased to welcome WITNESS and Research ICT Africa to its civil society constituency as members.
“The deep expertise and stellar reputations of these two new members underscores GNI’s enduring value as a mechanism for advancing digital rights, tech governance, and company accountability,” remarked Jason Pielemeier, GNI’s Executive Director. “We are very excited to learn from and collaborate with Witness and Research ICT Africa, both of which are organizations whose work we have long followed and admired.”
WITNESS supports human rights defenders and civic journalists with video and technology to create, verify, authenticate, and protect human rights evidence so it can be trusted, shared, and acted on in an AI-mediated information ecosystem
“Becoming part of GNI means an important next step for WITNESS and our long-term history of cross-sector collaborations on human rights, fortifying truth and artificial intelligence. We look forward to engaging with the GNI community and helping shape AI frameworks that take all voices into account, from frontline defenders to journalists and internet users.”
– Bruna Santos, Policy and Advocacy Manager at the Technology Threats and Opportunities team at WITNESS
Research ICT Africa (RIA) is an African think tank that has operated for two decades to fill a strategic gap in the development of a sustainable and just digital economy and information society. It has done so by building the multidisciplinary research capacity needed to inform evidence-based policy and effective regulation Africa. RIA’s dynamic and evolving research agenda examines the uneven distribution of the benefits and harms of the intensifying global processes of digitalisation and datafication.
RIA looks forward to joining GNI and contributing our expertise in digital policy and regulation across Africa. GNI’s diverse membership and global reach make it an ideal forum for RIA to expand our ability to advocate for the digital rights of Africans.”
– Pria Chetty, Executive Director at Research ICT Africa