Introduction
Like many other countries around the globe, Ethiopia has embraced ICTs and ICT based services as key enabler for social and economic development in the country. Various efforts are also underway to significantly increase Internet connectivity speeds and access. But greater bandwidth will not only mean faster and better internet access but also faster and better means to launch cyber-attacks and opens more opportunities for criminals to exploit naïve users.
In this article I will try to explore the efforts and initiatives being made by the government in fighting cybercrime from three cyberspace governance perspectives namely cyber security-related policies and strategies, legislative frameworks, and institutional arrangements. I will also provide some recommendations on what the government should do so that appropriate plans and measures can be implemented to a safer and secure Ethiopia.
1. Information Revolution and the New Form of Crime: Cybercrime
The dawn of the information age was proclaimed in 1991 by Alvin Toffler in his book The Third Wave. In this book, Alvin Toffler pointed out the history of the world to date can largely be portrayed as three waves namely the agricultural wave, the industrial wave and the information wave. The world is now at “the third wave” and owing to the revolution in information technology and this ‘third wave’ is called as information age.