As Unesco marked September 28 as international day of universal access to information, the public and the media in Rwanda are still finding it difficult to access information from the government.

For example, requests for information from Sobanukirwa, an online platform set up to ease access to information, go unanswered months on end.

“Many requests sent via Sobanukirwa have unfortunately gone unanswered,” said Stephen Abbott Pugh, the co-founder of Sobanukirwa and portfolio manager of Open Knowledge International, in a recent interview with Rwanda Today.

A look at the platform revealed that, as we speak, 89 requests have not been answered, five were unsuccessful while only 14 were answered.

“Universal access to information is bound up with the right to seek and receive information, which is an integral part of the right to freedom of expression,” reads a Unesco statement.

Apart from Burundi, the rest of the East African countries have laws granting access to information. However, implementation of these laws is largely wanting, stifling accountability of public funds.

The laws themselves are found to have many unnecessary instances where information may be denied, which is seen as deliberate efforts to ring-fence information from media and the public.

“There are very narrow interpretations of information that should not be accessed, the definitions of what cannot be accessed and what can be accessed in many of these laws are ambiguous and the orders are largely vague,” said Janak William, director, Correspondents Association of Kenya, noted at a meeting in Kigali.

In the Rwandan law, access to information relating to international relations, agreements or conventions, is restricted.

“The instances for denial of information in the Rwandan law are very ambiguous and some should out-rightly be removed. For instance, why shouldn’t people access information on purchase of arms and military infrastructure?” said Robert Mugabe, of Great Lakes Voice.

The Kenyan government has been criticised for its restrictive nature, and deliberate denial of information in many key sectors of the economy, for instance information on the extractive industry can’t be accessed.

In Uganda, the access to information law was enacted in 1995, however its implementation has been underwhelming, with government organs according it little respect as the sanctions in the law to punish officials who deny information are not adequately implemented.

The Official Secrets Act is viewed as a pretext by many government institutions and officials, where the act also shields them from punishment.

Tanzania recently banned live parliamentary broadcasts, something viewed as a step backwards in the country’s information access agenda.

Much as the role played by media pluralism in the region is well documented, it has given people a wide range of options to be informed as opposed to when the only media outlets were government controlled.