By Tony Onyima, Ph.D., fnge
Nigeria is approaching what the Nigerian Press Organisation (NPO) describes as a critical inflection point in its democratic and digital evolution. In a recent statement titled “Preserving Nigeria’s Information Sovereignty: Why the Federal Government Must Act to Secure the Nigerian Press in the Digital Age,” the NPO warned that decisions taken now by the Presidency and the National Assembly will shape not only the future of journalism, but also the strength of Nigeria’s social cohesion, national security, and democratic governance in the decades ahead. The NPO is the umbrella body of the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association of Nigeria (NPAN), Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria (BON), Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), and the Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP).
The NPO’s appeal is anchored on a fundamental question: can a democracy of Nigeria’s scale, diversity, and complexity afford to surrender control of its information ecosystem to unregulated global digital gatekeepers? This question goes beyond media economics. It touches the core of information sovereignty — the capacity of a state to regulate, protect, and shape its information environment in alignment with democratic values and national interests.
Across Africa, the rapid expansion of global technology corporations has reconfigured the architecture of information flows, public discourse, and political participation. As digital connectivity grows at unprecedented rates, global platforms increasingly determine how citizens access news, engage in civic debate, mobilise politically, and participate in democratic processes. The tension between global platform power and national democratic authority has become one of the defining governance challenges of the 21st century.
This essay examines the intersection of information sovereignty, global tech giants, and democratic growth in Africa. It situates the NPO’s concerns within broader continental and international debates, explores regulatory interventions in Canada and South Africa, and outlines policy directions for African democracies.
Global digital platforms — social media networks, search engines, video-sharing services, and cloud infrastructures — have become the principal intermediaries of public discourse. In Nigeria and across Africa, they dominate digital advertising markets, determine content visibility through proprietary algorithms, and monetise local news content at scale without proportionate reinvestment in domestic journalism.
This development represents more than market disruption. It is, as the NPO suggests, the emergence of private, transnational gatekeepers of public discourse, operating beyond the effective reach of national democratic accountability. The concentration of ownership and algorithmic control raises urgent questions about agenda-setting power, content moderation standards, and electoral integrity.
From a political economy perspective, platform dominance is sustained by network effects, massive data accumulation, and cross-border scale. The more users a platform attracts, the more data it gathers; the more data it gathers, the more precisely it can target advertisements and refine algorithmic recommendations. This self-reinforcing cycle entrenches dominance and marginalises local competitors.
For Nigeria and other African states, the challenge is compounded by reliance on foreign-owned digital infrastructures. Social media platforms, cloud services, and data analytics ecosystems are largely controlled outside the continent. Consequently, African governments and institutions often lack meaningful leverage over content moderation rules, data storage policies, and algorithmic amplification systems.
Information sovereignty should not be misconstrued as digital isolationism. Rather, it should be understood as strategic capacity-building: strengthening regulatory institutions, fostering indigenous technology ecosystems, promoting robust data protection regimes, and ensuring transparency in algorithmic governance.
At its core, information sovereignty encompasses three interrelated dimensions. First, data governance: who owns, controls, and benefits from data generated within a country’s borders? Second, platform accountability: how are global platforms regulated to ensure fair competition, content responsibility, and democratic integrity? Third, institutional capacity: do domestic regulators possess the technical expertise and legal authority to enforce proportionate remedies?
African states face a delicate balancing act. On one hand, open digital ecosystems encourage innovation, cross-border communication, and economic opportunity. On the other, unchecked platform dominance can erode local industries, distort public discourse, and weaken democratic resilience.
Democratic growth depends on the integrity of the public sphere. In multi-ethnic and multi-religious societies such as Nigeria, credible journalism plays a stabilising role. When trusted news institutions weaken, misinformation and digitally manipulated narratives spread unchecked, fuelling polarisation and insecurity.
The NPO underscores that no counterterrorism or intelligence framework can fully compensate for a collapsed information order. This observation is crucial. Democratic governance is not sustained solely by electoral procedures; it requires informed citizens, accountable institutions, and a shared factual foundation.
Algorithm-driven virality often privileges sensationalism over verification. When professional journalism is displaced by engagement-optimised content, elections and public accountability become vulnerable to distortion and coordinated falsehoods. In fragile democracies, such distortions can have destabilising consequences.
Moreover, press freedom is inseparable from economic viability. As the NPO observes, a press that cannot pay salaries, fund investigations, or retain talent is effectively unfree, regardless of constitutional guarantees. The erosion of newsroom revenue leads to job losses, declining professional standards, and diminished institutional memory — losses that are difficult to reverse. Information sovereignty, therefore, is not merely about regulatory control; it is about safeguarding the material conditions necessary for democratic deliberation.
The NPO’s clarion call forms part of a broader global reckoning. Leading democracies have concluded that non-intervention is no longer a neutral option. Canada offers a significant example. Confronted with the extraction of advertising revenue and the weakening of domestic journalism, Canada introduced the Online News Act — formally Bill C-18 — on April 5, 2022. The legislation received royal assent on June 22, 2023, establishing a framework that requires dominant digital platforms to negotiate compensation with Canadian news publishers for news content featured on their services.
Canada’s approach recognises journalism as a public-interest activity whose outputs — verified facts, investigative scrutiny, and balanced reporting — constitute public goods. When platforms monetise these goods without reinvesting in their production, structural asymmetry undermines democratic resilience.
Under the Act, major platforms have begun negotiating payment agreements. Google, for instance, agreed to pay Canadian news outlets approximately CAD $100 million annually through a collective funding arrangement. By early 2025, about CAD $17.25 million had already been disbursed to media organisations, with further distributions scheduled as implementation progresses.
The Canadian experience illustrates a central principle of information sovereignty: market correction through law. By mandating structured negotiation and compensation mechanisms, the state reasserted its authority over digital value exchange within its jurisdiction.
For African policymakers, the lesson is not to replicate the Canadian model mechanically, but to recognise that sovereign regulation of digital markets can coexist with open societies and innovation-driven economies.
South Africa provides another instructive example. In response to concerns about bargaining power imbalances between global digital platforms and local news publishers, the South African Competition Commission — equivalent to Nigeria’s FCCPC — launched the Media and Digital Platforms Market Inquiry (MDPMI) on October 17, 2023, to examine potential anti-competitive conduct and harm to the local media ecosystem.
After nearly 24 months of evidence gathering and public hearings, the Commission released its final report in November 2025, recommending remedies to address structural imbalances in advertising and digital content markets.
As part of the outcome, Google and YouTube agreed to provide a combined support package worth R688 million (approximately $40 million USD) to South African media organisations. The funds are designated for content licensing, innovation grants, and capacity-building initiatives aimed at strengthening local journalism within a platform-dominated digital environment.
What distinguishes the South African case is its reliance on competition law to protect information ecosystems. Rather than treating the issue solely as media policy, regulators addressed platform dominance as a market distortion with systemic democratic implications. This approach resonates with Nigeria’s institutional framework. The NPO notes that Nigeria already has capable institutions — the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) and the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) — empowered to enforce remedies, including sanctions for abuse of dominance or refusal to negotiate in good faith. These institutions may, however, require legal refinements and enhanced capacity to meet emerging digital challenges.
South Africa demonstrates that African states are not passive observers in global digital governance debates. They can design context-specific regulatory responses grounded in constitutional values and competition principles.
Crucially, information sovereignty must remain rights-based. Efforts to correct market imbalances must not devolve into censorship or excessive state control. The goal is to balance platform accountability with freedom of expression and innovation.
Nigeria’s democratic scale, demographic dynamism, and vibrant media landscape position it as a potential bellwether for the continent. The NPO frames its appeal not as protectionism, but as strategic leadership to prevent Nigeria’s democratic conversation from being outsourced to opaque commercial algorithms beyond national oversight.
If Nigeria succeeds in crafting a fair and forward-looking regulatory framework — recognising journalism as a public-interest activity, correcting bargaining imbalances, and ensuring fair remuneration for news content — it could establish a model for other African democracies confronting similar challenges.
Information sovereignty in Africa is not a rejection of global connectivity. It is a demand for equitable participation in shaping the digital order. As digital platforms become central to civic life, the question is no longer whether states should act, but how they can act wisely, proportionately, and constitutionally.
The experiences of Canada and South Africa demonstrate that democratic states can assert regulatory authority without stifling innovation. Structured legislative and competition-based interventions can restore balance between platforms and publishers while preserving openness.
For Africa, democratic growth depends on resilient public spheres anchored in credible journalism, accountable institutions, and informed citizens. Strengthening information sovereignty is therefore an act of democratic stewardship — ensuring that technological transformation strengthens rather than erodes constitutional governance.
At this historic juncture, the choice before Nigeria and other African states is not between openness and control, but between passive dependence and strategic agency. By advancing democratic digital sovereignty, Africa can harness global technologies while safeguarding the autonomy, integrity, and future of its democratic project.
Dr. Onyima, a former newspaper CEO, teaches media and communication at Paul University, Awka.
