Digital Democracy in a Divided Global Landscape


10 essays by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: “A first set of essays analyzes how local actors are navigating the new tech landscape. Lillian Nalwoga explores the challenges and upsides of Starlink satellite internet deployment in Africa, highlighting legal hurdles, security risks, and concerns about the platform’s leadership. As African nations look to Starlink as a valuable tool in closing the digital divide, Nalwoga emphasizes the need to invest in strong regulatory frameworks to safeguard digital spaces. Jonathan Corpus Ong and Dean Jackson analyze the landscape of counter-disinformation funding in local contexts. They argue that there is a “mismatch” between the priorities of funders and the strategies that activists would like to pursue, resulting in “ineffective and extractive workflows.” Ong and Jackson isolate several avenues for structural change, including developing “big tent” coalitions of activists and strategies for localizing aid projects. Janjira Sombatpoonsiri examines the role of local actors in foreign influence operations in Southeast Asia. She highlights three motivating factors that drive local participation in these operations: financial benefits, the potential to gain an edge in domestic power struggles, and the appeal of anti-Western narratives.

A second set of essays explores evolving applications of digital repression…

A third set focuses on national strategies and digital sovereignty debates…

A fourth set explores pressing tech policy and regulatory questions…(More)”.

Leveraging Citizen Data to Improve Public Services and Measure Progress Toward Sustainable Development Goal 16


Paper by Dilek Fraisl: “This paper presents the results of a pilot study conducted in Ghana that utilized citizen data approaches for monitoring a governance indicator within the SDG framework, focusing on indicator 16.6.2 citizen satisfaction with public services. This indicator is a crucial measure of governance quality, as emphasized by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through target 16.6 Develop effective, accountable, and transparent institutions at all levels. Indicator 16.6.2 specifically measures satisfaction with key public services, including health, education, and other government services, such as government-issued identification documents through a survey. However, with only 5 years remaining to achieve the SDGs, the lack of data continues to pose a significant challenge in monitoring progress toward this target, particularly regarding the experiences of marginalized populations. Our findings suggest that well-designed citizen data initiatives can effectively capture the experiences of marginalized individuals and communities. Additionally, they can serve as valuable supplements to official statistics, providing crucial data on population groups typically underrepresented in traditional surveys…(More)”.

The Global Data Barometer 2nd edition: A Shared Compass for Navigating the Data Landscape


Report by the Global Data Barometer: “Across the globe, we’re at a turning point. From artificial intelligence and digital governance to public transparency and service delivery, data is now a fundamental force shaping how our societies function and who they serve. It holds tremendous promise to drive inclusive growth, foster accountability, and support urgent action on global challenges. And yet, access to high-quality, usable data is becoming increasingly constrained.

Some, like Verhulst (2024), have begun calling this moment a “data winter,” a period marked by shrinking openness, rising inequality in access, and growing fragmentation in how data is governed and used. This trend poses a risk not just to innovation but to the democratic values that underpin trust, participation, and accountability.

In this complex landscape, evidence matters more than ever. That is why we are proud to launch the Second Edition of the Global Data Barometer (GDB), a collaborative and comparative study that tracks the state of data for the public good across 43 countries, with a focused lens on Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and Africa…

The Barometer tracks countries across four dimensions: governance, capabilities, and availability, while also exploring key cross-cutting areas like AI readiness, inclusion, and data use. Here are some of the key takeaways:

  • The Implementation Gap

Many countries have adopted laws and frameworks for data governance, but there is a stark gap between policy and practice. Without strong institutions and dedicated capacity, even well-designed frameworks fall short.

  • The Role of Skills and Infrastructure

Data does not flow or translate into value without people and systems in place. Across both Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa, we see underinvestment in public sector skills, training, and the infrastructure needed to manage and reuse data effectively.

  • AI Is Moving Faster Than Governance

AI is increasingly present in national strategies, but very few countries have clear policies to guide its ethical use. Governance frameworks rarely address issues like algorithmic bias, data quality, or the accountability of AI-driven decision-making.

  • Open Data Needs Reinvestment

Many countries once seen as open data champions are struggling to sustain their efforts. Legal mandates are not always matched by technical implementation or resources. As a result, open data initiatives risk losing momentum.

  • Transparency Tools Are Missing

Key datasets that support transparency and anti-corruption, such as lobbying registers, beneficial ownership data, and political finance records, are often missing or fragmented. This makes it hard to follow the money or hold institutions to account.

  • Inclusion Is Still Largely Symbolic

Despite commitments to equity, inclusive data governance remains the exception. Data is rarely published in Indigenous or widely spoken non-official languages. Accessibility for persons with disabilities is often treated as a recommendation rather than a requirement.

  • Interoperability Remains a Barrier

Efforts to connect datasets across government, such as on procurement, company data, or political integrity, are rare. Without common standards or identifiers, it is difficult to track influence or evaluate policy impact holistically…(More)”.

The Next Wave of Innovation Districts


Article by Bruce Katz and Julie Wagner: “A next wave of innovation districts is gaining momentum given the structural changes underway in the global economy. The examples cited above telegraph where existing innovation districts are headed and explain why new districts are forming. The districts highlighted and many others are responding to fast-changing and highly volatile macro forces and the need to de-riskdecarbonize, and diversify talent.

The next wave of innovation districts is distinctive for multiple reasons.

  • The sectors leveraging this innovation geography expand way beyond the traditional focus on life sciences to include advanced manufacturing for military and civilian purposes.
  • The deeper emphasis on decarbonization is driving the use of basic and applied R&D to invent new clean technology products and solutions as well as organizing energy generation and distribution within the districts themselves to meet crucial carbon targets.
  • The stronger emphasis on the diversification of talent includes the upskilling of workers for new production activities and a broader set of systems to drive inclusive innovation to address long-standing inequities.
  • The districts are attracting a broader group of stakeholders, including manufacturing companies, utilities, university industrial design and engineering departments and hard tech startups.
  • The districts ultimately are looking to engage a wider base of investors given the disparate resources and traditions of capitalization that support defense tech, clean tech, med tech and other favored forms of innovation.

Some regions or states are also seeking ways to connect a constellation of districts and other economic hubs to harness the imperative to innovate accentuated by these and other macro forces. The state of South Australia is one such example. It has prioritized several innovation hubs across this region to foster South Australia’s knowledge and innovation ecosystem, as well as identify emerging economic clusters in industry sectors of global competitiveness to advance the broader economy…(More)”.

The Meanings of Voting for Citizens: A Scientific Challenge, a Portrait, and Implications


Book by Carolina Plescia: “On election day, citizens typically place a mark beside a party or candidate on a ballot paper. The right to cast this mark has been a historic conquest and today, voting is among the most frequent political acts citizens perform. But what does that mark mean to them? This book explores the diverse conceptualizations of voting among citizens in 13 countries across Europe, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania. This book presents empirical evidence based on nearly a million words about voting from over 25,000 people through an open-ended survey and both qualitative and quantitative methods. The book’s innovative approach includes conceptual, theoretical, and empirical advancements and provides a comprehensive understanding of what voting means to citizens and how these meanings influence political engagement. This book challenges assumptions about universal views on democracy and reveals how meanings of voting vary among individuals and across both liberal democracies and electoral autocracies. The book also examines the implications of these meanings for political behaviour and election reforms. The Meanings of Voting for Citizens is a critical reference for scholars of public opinion, behaviour, and democratization, as well as a valuable resource for undergraduate and graduate courses in comparative political behaviour, empirical methods, and survey research. Practitioners working on election reforms will find it particularly relevant via its insights into how citizens’ meanings of voting impact the effectiveness of electoral reforms…(More)”.

Leading, not lagging: Africa’s gen AI opportunity


Article by Mayowa Kuyoro, Umar Bagus: “The rapid rise of gen AI has captured the world’s imagination and accelerated the integration of AI into the global economy and the lives of people across the world. Gen AI heralds a step change in productivity. As institutions apply AI in novel ways, beyond the advanced analytics and machine learning (ML) applications of the past ten years, the global economy could increase significantly, improving the lives and livelihoods of millions.1

Nowhere is this truer than in Africa, a continent that has already demonstrated its ability to use technology to leapfrog traditional development pathways; for example, mobile technology overcoming the fixed-line internet gap, mobile payments in Kenya, and numerous African institutions making the leap to cloud faster than their peers in developed markets.2 Africa has been quick on the uptake with gen AI, too, with many unique and ingenious applications and deployments well underway…(More)”.

Across McKinsey’s client service work in Africa, many institutions have tested and deployed AI solutions. Our research has found that more than 40 percent of institutions have either started to experiment with gen AI or have already implemented significant solutions (see sidebar “About the research inputs”). However, the continent has so far only scratched the surface of what is possible, with both AI and gen AI. If institutions can address barriers and focus on building for scale, our analysis suggests African economies could unlock up to $100 billion in annual economic value across multiple sectors from gen AI alone. That is in addition to the still-untapped potential from traditional AI and ML in many sectors today—the combined traditional AI and gen AI total is more than double what gen AI can unlock on its own, with traditional AI making up at least 60 percent of the value…(More)”

Activating citizens: the contribution of the Capability Approach to critical citizenship studies and to understanding the enablers of engaged citizenship


Paper by Anna Colom and Agnes Czajka: “The paper argues that the Capability Approach can make a significant contribution to understanding the enablers of engaged citizenship. Using insights from critical citizenship studies and original empirical research on young people’s civic and political involvement in western Kenya, we argue that it is useful to think of the process of engaged citizenship as comprised of two distinct yet interrelated parts: activation and performance. We suggest that the Capability Approach (CA) can help us understand what resources and processes are needed for people to not only become activated but to also effectively perform their citizenship. Although the CA is rarely brought into conversation with critical citizenship studies literatures, we argue that it can be useful in both operationalising the insights of critical citizenship studies on citizenship engagement and illustrating how activation and performance can be effectively supported or catalysed….(More)”

How Behaviorally-Informed Technologies Are Shaping Global Aid


Article by Heather Graci: “Contraceptives are available in Sub-Saharan Africa, but maternal deaths caused by unwanted pregnancies are still rampant. Refugee agencies support those forced to flee their homes, but don’t always know where they’ll go—or what they’ll need when they get there. AI-powered tutors provide crucial support to kids struggling in under-resourced schools, but may not treat their students equally. 

These are the sorts of humanitarian challenges that featured at the seventh annual United Nations Behavioural Science Week earlier this month. Each year, the UN Behavioural Science Group brings together researchers and practitioners from inside and outside of the UN to discuss how to use behavioral science for social good. Practitioners are exposed to the latest research that could inform their work; academics glimpse how their ideas play out amid the chaos of the real world. And everyone learns about projects happening beyond their focus area. Experts in healthcare, finance, education, peace and security, and beyond share a common language—and common solutions—in behavioral science. 

This year technology was a central theme. Panelists from organizations like UNICEF and the World Bank joined academic experts from behavioral science, data science, and AI to discuss how thoughtful, behaviorally-informed technologies can bolster global development and aid efforts. 

I’ve curated three sessions from the week that capture the different ways this is happening. Digital assistants that boost the capacity of health care workers or teachers. Predictive models that help aid agencies send the right resources to the right regions. And just as AI can exacerbate bias, it can mitigate it too—as long as we understand how it intersects with different cultures as it’s deployed around the world…(More)”.

Technical Tiers: A New Classification Framework for Global AI Workforce Analysis


Report by Siddhi Pal, Catherine Schneider and Ruggero Marino Lazzaroni: “… introduces a novel three-tiered classification system for global AI talent that addresses significant methodological limitations in existing workforce analyses, by distinguishing between different skill categories within the existing AI talent pool. By distinguishing between non-technical roles (Category 0), technical software development (Category 1), and advanced deep learning specialization (Category 2), our framework enables precise examination of AI workforce dynamics at a pivotal moment in global AI policy.

Through our analysis of a sample of 1.6 million individuals in the AI talent pool across 31 countries, we’ve uncovered clear patterns in technical talent distribution that significantly impact Europe’s AI ambitions. Asian nations hold an advantage in specialized AI expertise, with South Korea (27%), Israel (23%), and Japan (20%) maintaining the highest proportions of Category 2 talent. Within Europe, Poland and Germany stand out as leaders in specialized AI talent. This may be connected to their initiatives to attract tech companies and investments in elite research institutions, though further research is needed to confirm these relationships.

Our data also reveals a shifting landscape of global talent flows. Research shows that countries employing points-based immigration systems attract 1.5 times more high-skilled migrants than those using demand-led approaches. This finding takes on new significance in light of recent geopolitical developments affecting scientific research globally. As restrictive policies and funding cuts create uncertainty for researchers in the United States, one of the big destinations for European AI talent, the way nations position their regulatory environments, scientific freedoms, and research infrastructure will increasingly determine their ability to attract and retain specialized AI talent.

The gender analysis in our study illuminates another dimension of competitive advantage. Contrary to the overall AI talent pool, EU countries lead in female representation in highly technical roles (Category 2), occupying seven of the top ten global rankings. Finland, Czechia, and Italy have the highest proportion of female representation in Category 2 roles globally (39%, 31%, and 28%, respectively). This gender diversity represents not merely a social achievement but a potential strategic asset in AI innovation, particularly as global coalitions increasingly emphasize the importance of diverse perspectives in AI development…(More)”

Mind the (Language) Gap: Mapping the Challenges of LLM Development in Low-Resource Language Contexts


White Paper by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI), the Asia Foundation and the University of Pretoria: “…maps the LLM development landscape for low-resource languages, highlighting challenges, trade-offs, and strategies to increase investment; prioritize cross-disciplinary, community-driven development; and ensure fair data ownership…

  • Large language model (LLM) development suffers from a digital divide: Most major LLMs underperform for non-English—and especially low-resource—languages; are not attuned to relevant cultural contexts; and are not accessible in parts of the Global South.
  • Low-resource languages (such as Swahili or Burmese) face two crucial limitations: a scarcity of labeled and unlabeled language data and poor quality data that is not sufficiently representative of the languages and their sociocultural contexts.
  • To bridge these gaps, researchers and developers are exploring different technical approaches to developing LLMs that better perform for and represent low-resource languages but come with different trade-offs:
    • Massively multilingual models, developed primarily by large U.S.-based firms, aim to improve performance for more languages by including a wider range of (100-plus) languages in their training datasets.
    • Regional multilingual models, developed by academics, governments, and nonprofits in the Global South, use smaller training datasets made up of 10-20 low-resource languages to better cater to and represent a smaller group of languages and cultures.
    • Monolingual or monocultural models, developed by a variety of public and private actors, are trained on or fine-tuned for a single low-resource language and thus tailored to perform well for that language…(More)”