Developing a model for effective public oversight of intelligence-driven surveillance through an African-focused lens

This article distils the main findings of the Special Issue on public oversight of intelligence-driven digital surveillance in Africa. We explore how the public can perform such oversight better, learning the lessons from moments when public oversight has been attempted and proposing a model for effective public oversight that identifies its main features. Underpinned by democratic accountability theory, participatory governance, and social movement theory, we argue that public oversight could be particularly effective where political control has compromised formal oversight. We identify three pillars necessary for effective public oversight: structural preconditions for such oversight, the organisational capacities needed to make it effective and mobilisation dynamics that favour digital surveillance being taken up as a mass issue where the wrongs caused by such surveillance are generalised across society. We propose a model based on these pillars that explains the conditions under which public oversight is likely to be effective in achieving greater intelligence accountability and argue that this form of oversight needs to be strengthened in a moment when democratic institutions are under attack and democracy itself as a normative ideal can no longer be taken for granted. Meaningful efforts need to be made to build popular alternatives to existing oversight systems.