As an Information Controls Fellow, Babatunde worked with the Tor Project to investigate the use of information controls circumvention tools in four African countries: Nigeria, Cameroon, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe.
Babatunde collaborated with the Tor Project to explore the reasons behind an apparent lack of adoption of circumvention tools, despite varying levels of censorship being prevalent in each of these country contexts. The project sheds light on the reasons behind this and seek to engage the tools directly to mitigate any issues identified. Objectives included gaining understanding of what tools are adopted during periods of heightened censorship in Africa, why they are adopted, and how they are used; understanding the reasons for the low adoption of these tools in these countries; and collecting usability feedback on these tools – providing this feedback directly back to tools’ designers. Babatunde published a blog post summarizing the project and a guest blog post on the Council on Foreign Relations website. The full report can also be accessed directly. Babatunde is Research Officer at Paradigm Initiative, where he leads the production of all research output which feeds into the advocacy work of the organization in digital rights and inclusion in Africa.
