In June, Chahana Takiou, a Malian editor, stood on a media forum in Bamako and complained that Mali’s cybercrime law was being used to jail journalists who should have been tried under the country’s press law, which carries far lighter penalties. A prosecutor sat beside him on the panel. In August, a Bamako court sentenced him to a year in prison, half of it suspended, for undermining the credibility of the state. The Committee to Protect Journalists noted that by arresting him the authorities had proved his comments entirely accurate.
Ghana has followed a similar path. In March, a TikTok creator in Kumasi was arrested over a viral video about police officers. A pastor was remanded in April, and two opposition NPP figures were detained the same month for online posts. May saw another TikTok user arrested over a video about the President. In July, Camilla Alhassan was detained after claiming on TikTok that President Mahama had sacrificed thirty‑two cows to secure political power, and that the government’s distribution of sanitary pads to flood victims was a cover for the cows. Before sentencing, the court ordered her to take a pregnancy test.
Uganda’s experience echoes the trend. Last month, Remmy Asiteza of the Daily Express was remanded to Luzira Prison on charges of publishing fake news and broadcasting without a licence, after reporting alleged corruption in the recruitment of assistant district commissioners. A second Ugandan journalist had spent five weeks in prison on a fake news charge over a report about the First Lady; the charges were dropped in August.
None of these cases involved synthetic media. All were prosecutions under laws framed as a response to deepfakes, yet the arrests were for ordinary speech. Professor Stephen Kwaku Asare noted last month that Section 208 “invites the police to become the immediate arbiters of truth.” Arrest, he added, should not be the state’s first response to a disputed claim.
The Media Foundation for West Africa counted fourteen arrests under Section 76 of the Electronic Communications Act and Sections 207 and 208 of the Criminal Offences Act in sixteen months under the current administration, compared with eight in the eight years before it. In July, the Minority Caucus demanded that the President direct the Attorney‑General to repeal Sections 207 and 208, with Alexander Afenyo‑Markin describing Alhassan’s imprisonment as a recreation of criminal libel.
Within the legislative pipeline sits the Misinformation, Disinformation, Hate Speech and Publication of Other Information Bill, part of a package of digital governance bills from the Ministry of Communications, Digitalisation and Innovation. The bill proposes to repeal Section 208 and amend Section 76, a move the Media Foundation for West Africa, the Ghana Journalists Association and the Minority have long called for. However, the bill contemplates a licensing‑based sanction regime for media and content creators, potentially conflicting with Article 162(3) of the Constitution, which forbids censorship through licensing. It also defines hate speech expansively enough to cover most political commentary and comedy, and retains custodial sentences for speech offences, raising concerns that the law will be used to silence dissent as much as to curb misinformation.
