https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210930/11371447668/social-media-regulation-african-countries-will-require-more-than-international-human-rights-law.shtml

There has been a lot of focus on moderation as carried out by platforms—the rules social media companies base their decision on what content remains online. There has however been limited attention on how actors other than social media platforms, in this case governments, seek to regulate these platforms. 

Focusing more on African governments, they carry out this regulation primarily through laws. These laws can be broadly divided into two: direct and indirect regulatory laws. The direct regulatory laws can be seen in countries like Ethiopia and more recently in Nigeria. They are similar to Germany’s Network Enforcement Act and France’s Online Hate Speech Law that directly place responsibilities on platforms and require them to remove online hate speech within a specific time and failure of which attracts heavy sanctions.