Challenge Seminar: Privacy in an African Context

Patricia Boshe is co-director at the African Law and Technology Institute (AfriLTI), and a researcher at the Chair for European and International Information and Data Protection Law at the University of Passau, Germany. Patricia Boshe researches and teaches privacy and data protection. She works as a data protection expert and consultant.

Her recent research is on the concept of privacy in an African context.

Patricia Boshe will give her perspectives on this theme in her talk:

The idea I would like to speak about in the Challenge Seminar is the possibility or a need for an alternative conceptual understanding of privacy in an African context, as opposed to the popular Western (EU- and US-based) understanding. 

This idea is based on the fact that Africa, like most Latin American countries and the Far East, has different cultural values that significantly affect the notion of privacy as we know it. While the right to privacy focuses on an individual, African culture insists on community value above all. An individual right is regarded as secondary to community rights (if any), needs, and priorities. Nevertheless, individuals still have a claim to privacy, and the community recognises this right - if not in the same manner as it is conceived in the Western world. 

A debate will follow the talk.

The Challenge Seminar will be on Zoom.

Please sign up for the seminar here to receive the Zoom link.

About the Challenge Seminars:

PRIVACY hosts two Challenge Seminars each semester. Here, PRIVACY’s research team join with invited experts on such topics as surveillance, privacy rights, medical ethics, work-life balance, and social cohesion, to pose mutual research challenges.