31 May 2024
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Esteemed officials of the Government of the United People of Tanzania
The Diplomatic Community
Distinguished stakeholders
MISA Tanzania Governing Council
Distinguished Guests
It is an honour to be back in Dar es Salaam, which the peoples of Southern Africa proudly refer to as home from home.
It is the source of the tributaries upon which solidarity for freedom has emerged since the days of the struggles for independence.
Allow me to therefore express my gratitude and pay homage to the peoples of Tanzania, Mozambique and Zambia for bearing the burden of hosting and supporting the liberation movements leading to the liquidation of colonial rule in Southern Africa, with the last frontier being South Africa’s freedom in 1994.
This spirit of solidarity, established by the struggle’s founding fathers and mothers, anchors our resolve towards the drive for free expression, which brings us here for this second Freedom of Expression Forum.
Madam Chairperson and distinguished guests, we have never been so well placed as we are today to take decisive forward steps towards creating a people-centred society, especially one that places the generally marginalised at the centre.
As we enter the last decade of the Sustainable Development Goals and eclipse the first decade of the African Union Agenda 2063, the continent and the region need to leave no one behind, especially the historically marginalised groups.
I congratulate the MISA Tanzania Chapter on the successful convening of this 2nd Forum on Expression, a testament to your admirable efforts in addressing societal challenges.
This aligns with the MISA Regional Strategy 2021-2026, which the Chapter aptly contributed to and the convening of meaningful conversations that impact the people of Southern Africa and Africa at large.
This is why the Tanzania Chapter has rightfully taken this deliberate approach, focusing on the generally marginalised communities and gravitating towards the centre with the same constituencies.
The solution to the challenges facing expression in ever-changing contexts is harnessing the power of the fringe and marginalised groups yet when aggregated, these groups bring much-needed dividend in pushing the needle pertaining to the subject matter.
I seek to challenge this esteemed gathering to be open-minded and intensely engage in how we will promote and defend expression in the age of fragmentation as we see it today.
Expression is consistently attacked by moving targets and tectonic shifts in the broader geopolitics, economic, political, cultural, and technological shifts.
I’m also inspired by the agenda’s structure, which is broad enough to allow for strategies and resolutions that will shape and arrange our footprints as we sustain and escalate the campaigns to defend and protect expression, with the historically marginalised groups at the centre.
I see the following key issues as topical in our engagements and how they interface with the strategic objectives of our campaigns and strategies:
- Strife at a global scale, with conflicts degenerating into armed conflict.
- The number of people living in fragile states is perpetually on the increase.
- Changing climate, with more people facing starvation due to climate change-induced famine.
- Fast-paced changes in technology, accelerated by Artificial Intelligence and how it shapes expression ecosystems.
- Information disorders and information integrity
These are some of the broader issues that are now dislocating the expression ecosystem, which requires our agility in connecting the dots and shaping strategic interventions that allow for the broader enjoyment of our collective rights to express.
This Forum should, therefore, cast its eyes forward in structuring a new pact, as the United Nations would say – a pact for the future that places expression at the centre of this future — taking into consideration the previously marginalised constituencies’ capacity to articulate their issues and be heard.
Our own new world will be born out of these noble engagements, which are inspired by the spirit of hope which reigns so confidently in this Forum and impacts the entire continent to continuously push forward even in the most complex of times.
I Thank You.
