Book edited by Gedion Onyango: “This book examines the links between public policy and Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technological developments in Africa. It broadly assesses three key areas – policy entrepreneurship, policy tools and citizen participation – in order to better understand the interfaces between public policy and technological transformations in African countries. The book presents incisive case studies on topics including AI policies, mobile money, e-budgeting, digital economy, digital agriculture and digital ethical dilemmas in order to illuminate technological proliferation in African policy systems. Its analysis considers the broader contexts of African state politics and governance. It will appeal to students, instructors, researchers and practitioners interested in governance and digital transformations in developing countries…(More)”.
Data Collaboratives: Enabling a Healthy Data Economy Through Partnerships
Paper by Stefaan Verhulst (as Part of the Digital Revolution and New Social Contract Program): “…Overcoming data silos is key to addressing these data asymmetries and promoting a healthy data economy. This is equally true of silos that exist within sectors as it is of those among sectors (e.g., between the public and private sectors). Today, there is a critical mismatch between data supply and demand. The data that could be most useful rarely gets applied to the social, economic, cultural, and political problems it could help solve. Data silos, driven in large part by deeply entrenched asymmetries and a growing sense of “ownership,” are stunting the public good potential of data.
This paper presents a framework for responsible data sharing and reuse that could increase sharing between the public and private sectors to address some of the most entrenched asymmetries. Drawing on theoretical and empirical material, we begin by outlining how a period of rapid datafication—the Era of the Zettabyte—has led to data asymmetries that are increasingly deleterious to the public good. Sections II and III are normative. Having outlined the nature and scope of the problem, we present a number of steps and recommendations that could help overcome or mitigate data asymmetries. In particular, we focus on one institutional structure that has proven particularly promising: data collaboratives, an emerging model for data sharing between sectors. We show how data collaboratives could ease the flow of data between the public and private sectors, helping break down silos and ease asymmetries. Section II offers a conceptual overview of data collaboratives, while Section III provides an approach to operationalizing data collaboratives. It presents a number of specific mechanisms to build a trusted sharing ecology….(More)”.
Cross-Border Data Policy Index
Report by the Global Data Alliance: “The ability to responsibly transfer data around the globe supports cross-border economic opportunity, cross-border technological and scientific progress, and cross-border digital transformation and inclusion, among other public policy objectives. To assess where policies have helped create an enabling environment for cross-border data and its associated benefits, the Global Data Alliance has developed the Cross-Border Data Policy Index.
The Cross-Border Data Policy Index offers a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the relative openness or restrictiveness of cross-border data policies across nearly 100 economies. Global economies are classified into four levels. At Level 1 are economies that impose relatively fewer limits on the cross-border access to knowledge, information, digital tools, and economic opportunity for their citizens and legal persons. Economies’ restrictiveness scores increase as they are found to impose greater limits on cross-border data, thereby eroding opportunities for digital transformation while also impeding other policy objectives relating to health, safety, security, and the environment…(More)”.
Digital Technologies in Emerging Countries
Open Access Book edited by Francis Fukuyama and Marietje Schaake: “…While there has been a tremendous upsurge in scholarly research into the political and social impacts of digital technologies, the vast majority of this work has tended to focus on rich countries in North America and Europe. Both regions had high levels of internet penetration and the state capacity to take on—potentially, at any rate—regulatory issues raised by digitization….The current volume is an initial effort to rectify the imbalance in the way that centers and programs such as ours look at the world, by focusing on what might broadly be labeled the “global south,” which we have labeled “emerging countries” (ECs). Countries and regions outside of North America and Europe face similar opportunities and challenges to those developed regions, but also problems that are unique to themselves…(More)”.
Filling Africa’s Data Gap
Article by Jendayi Frazer and Peter Blair Henry: “Every few years, the U.S. government launches a new initiative to boost economic growth in Africa. In bold letters and with bolder promises, the White House announces that public-private partnerships hold the key to growth on the continent. It pledges to make these partnerships a cornerstone of its Africa policy, but time and again it fails to deliver.
A decade after U.S. President Barack Obama rolled out Power Africa—his attempt to solve Africa’s energy crisis by mobilizing private capital—half of the continent’s sub-Saharan population remains without access to electricity. In 2018, the Trump administration proclaimed that its Prosper Africa initiative would counter China’s debt-trap diplomacy and “expand African access to business finance.” Five years on, Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Zambia are in financial distress and pleading for debt relief from Beijing and other creditors. Yet the Biden administration is once more touting the potential of public-private investment in Africa, organizing high-profile visits and holding leadership summits to prove that this time, the United States is “all in” on the continent.
There is a reason these efforts have yielded so little: goodwill tours, clever slogans, and a portfolio of G-7 pet projects in Africa do not amount to a sound investment pitch. Potential investors, public and private, need to know which projects in which countries are economically and financially worthwhile. Above all, that requires current and comprehensive data on the expected returns that investment in infrastructure in the developing world can yield. At present, investors lack this information, so they pass. If the United States wants to “build back better” in Africa—to expand access to business finance and encourage countries on the continent to choose sustainable and high-quality foreign investment over predatory lending from China and Russia—it needs to give investors access to better data…(More)”.
A Global Digital Compact — an Open, Free and Secure Digital Future for All
UN Secretary General: “…The present brief proposes the development of a Global Digital Compact that would set out principles, objectives and actions for advancing an open, free, secure and human-centred digital future, one that is anchored in universal human rights and that enables the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals. It outlines areas in which the need for multi-stakeholder digital cooperation is urgent and sets out how a Global Digital Compact can help to realize the commitment in the declaration on the commemoration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the United Nations (General Assembly resolution 75/1) to “shaping a shared vision on digital cooperation” by providing an inclusive global framework. Such a framework is essential for the multi-stakeholder action required to overcome digital, data and innovation divides and to achieve the governance required for a sustainable digital future.
Our digital world is one of divides. In 2002, when governments first recognized the challenge of
the digital divide, 1 billion people had access to the Internet. Today, 5.3 billion people are digitally
connected, yet the divide persists across regions, gender, income, language, and age groups. Some 89 per cent of people in Europe are online, but only 21 per cent of women in low-income countries use the Internet. While digitally deliverable services now account for almost two thirds of global services trade, access is unaffordable in some parts of the world. The cost of a smartphone in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa is more than 40 per cent of the average monthly income, and African users pay more than three times the global average for mobile data. Fewer than half of the world’s countries track digital
skills, and the data that exist highlight the depth of digital learning gaps. Two decades after the
World Summit on the Information Society, the digital divide is still a gulf.
Data divides are also growing. As data are collected and used in digital applications, they generate huge commercial and social value. While monthly global data traffic is forecast to grow by more than 400 per cent by 2026, activity is concentrated among a few global players. Many developing countries are at risk of becoming mere providers of raw data while having to pay for the services that their data help to produce…(More)”.
International Data Governance – Pathways to Progress
Press Release: “In May 2023, the United Nations System Chief Executives Board for Coordination endorsed International Data Governance – Pathways to Progress, developed through the High-level Committee on Programmes (HLCP) which approved the paper at its 45th session in March 2023. International Data Governance – Pathways to Progress and its addenda were developed by the HLCP Working Group on International Data Governance…(More)”. (See Annex 1: Mapping and Comparing Data Governance Frameworks).
The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence for the Sustainable Development Goals
Book by Francesca Mazzi and Luciano Floridi: “Artificial intelligence (AI) as a general-purpose technology has great potential for advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, the AI×SDGs phenomenon is still in its infancy in terms of diffusion, analysis, and empirical evidence. Moreover, a scalable adoption of AI solutions to advance the achievement of the SDGs requires private and public actors to engage in coordinated actions that have been analysed only partially so far. This volume provides the first overview of the AI×SDGs phenomenon and its related challenges and opportunities. The first part of the book adopts a programmatic approach, discussing AI×SDGs at a theoretical level and from the perspectives of different stakeholders. The second part illustrates existing projects and potential new applications…(More)”.
Challenge-Based Learning, Research, and Innovation
Book by Arturo Molina and Rajagopal: “Challenge-based research focuses on addressing societal and environmental problems. One way of doing so is by transforming existing businesses to profitable ventures through co-creation and co-evolution. Drawing on the resource-based view, this book discusses how social challenges can be linked with the industrial value-chain through collaborative research, knowledge sharing, and transfer of technology to deliver value.
The work is divided into three sections: Part 1 discusses social challenges, triple bottom line, and entrepreneurship as drivers for research, learning, and innovation while Part 2 links challenge-based research to social and industrial development in emerging markets. The final section considers research-based innovation and the role of technology, with the final chapter bridging concepts and practices to shape the future of society and industry. The authors present the RISE paradigm, which integrates people (society), planet (sustainability), and profit (industry and business) as critical constructs for socio-economic and regional development.
Arguing that the converging of society and industry is essential for the business ecosystem to stay competitive in the marketplace, this book analyzes possible approaches to linking challenge-based research with social and industrial innovations in the context of sectoral challenges like food production, housing, energy, biotechnology, and sustainability. It will serve as a valuable resource to researchers interested in topics such as social challenges, innovation, technology, sustainability, and society-industry linkage…(More)”.
Financing the Common Good
Article by Mariana Mazzucato: “…The international monetary system which emerged in the aftermath of World War II undoubtedly represented an important innovation. But its structure is no longer fit for purpose. The challenges we face today—from climate change to public-health crises—are complex, interrelated and global in nature. Our financial institutions must reflect this reality.
Because the financial system echoes the logic of the entire economic system, this will require a more fundamental change: we must broaden the economic thinking that has long underpinned institutional mandates. To shape the markets of the future, maximising public value in the process, we must embrace an entirely new economics.
Most economic thinking today assigns the state and multilateral actors responsibility for removing barriers to economic activity, de-risking trade and finance and levelling the playing-field for business. As a result, governments and international lenders tinker around the edges of markets, rather than doing what is actually needed—deliberately shaping the economic and financial system to advance the common good…(More)”.