In Cameroon, Section 78(1) of Law 2010/012 of December 21, 2010 on Cybersecurity and Cybercrime criminalizes the use of electronic communications to “publish or propagate a piece of information without being able to attest its veracity or prove that the said piece of information was true.” On the other hand, Section 24(b) of Nigeria’s Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, etc) Act of 2015 makes it a criminal offense to knowingly or intentionally publish a message online, or to cause such a message to be sent, when the individual knows the message “to be false, for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred, ill will or needless anxiety to another.” This is also the only law which vaguely makes reference to some form of malinformation—the deliberate alteration of online content or information for personal gain, for example revenge porn or doxing. When talking about cybercrime in general, Sections 22 and 23 of Kenya’s Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act 5 of 2018 criminalize “false publications” and the “publication of false information.” Section 22 prohibits individuals from intentionally publishing false, misleading, or fictitious data, with the intent that the data be considered or acted upon as authentic. Section 23 prohibits individuals from knowingly publishing— in print, through a broadcast, or over a computer system—false information which “is calculated or results in panic, chaos, or violence among citizens of the Republic, or which is likely to discredit the reputation of a person.” On the other hand, Article 25 of Togo’s cybercrime law (Loi 2018-026 sur la cybersecurity et la lutte contre la cybercriminalité) outlaws the electronic dissemination of false information which would make it appear that the destruction of property or harm to another person has been (or will be) committed, or regarding an emergency situation. INSULT LAWS A debatable paradigm of the legal response to misand disinformation is the use of colonially inherited “insult laws.” Post-independence governments have continued to enforce these laws, despite the Resolution on Repealing Criminal Defamation Laws in Africa of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR 2010). Insult laws were enacted for the specific purpose of criminalizing any insults directed at public officials. Therefore, while these laws are related to mis- or disinformation laws in that the central concern is limiting freedom of speech and expression, for the I N FO R M ATI O N D I SO R D ER IN THE GLOBA L SOUTH purposes of this study, we did not focus on them, because of their subjective nature. For example, calling a president a fool is not necessarily a false statement. The veracity of such a statement cannot be ascertained objectively. The offensive nature of such a statement is evident, but the veracity is not. For example, In Zimbabwe, Article 33 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act (Chapter 9:23) states that anyone found guilty of undermining the authority of or insulting the president will face a fine and/or one year in prison. In Rwanda, Law No. In the absence of guidelines 22/2009 on Media also outlaws on what constitutes contempt any expression of contempt for the for the head of state or the head of state and specifies a prisundermining of authority, on sentence of three months and/ subjective opinions about or a fine for anyone found guilty. In the absence of guidelines on what authority figures can be labelled constitutes contempt for the head both false and offensive. of state or the undermining of authority, subjective opinions about authority figures can be labelled both false and offensive. In this sense, this study did not delve deeper into insult laws; nonetheless, we recognize that they may be used in conjunction with other laws directly relating to mis- and disinformation. 6.2 CASE STUDIES: THE APPLICATION OF LEGISLATION TO ADDRESS INFORMATION DISORDER As has been highlighted earlier in the report, most sub-Saharan African countries do not explicitly legislate against information disorder (i.e. in terms of mis- and disinformation). Bar Ethiopia, most countries rely on secondary legislative provisions to cater for mis- and disinformation, predominantly through press freedom and cybercrime laws. Therefore, when it comes to law enforcement case studies, the majority of case studies concern journalists and, as of late, false information related to the Covid-19 pandemic. Some of these cases are hard to find, as they have been dismissed for lacking substance. However, sites such as www. disinformationtracker.org have assisted us to identify instances in which legislation has been applied. Some examples are discussed in the subsections that follow. ETHIOPIA: YASEYEW SHIMELIS In April 2020, journalist Yaseyew Shimelis was arrested and charged for violating the Hate Speech and Disinformation Prevention and Suppression Sub -Saharan Africa – 1 62