Charting the Scramble for Africa
Dear Reader,
When compared with the breathless play-by-play commentary that surrounds Silicon Valley’s every move, the context of digitalization in other regions, such as Africa, remains relatively invisible. This gap in the discourse is symptomatic of a larger geopolitical imbalance with respect to digitalization, as we explore in this issue of DataSyn.
But first, a look at this month’s key developments in the Big Tech space.
Dubbed in news narratives as the Magnificent Seven (the latest industry buzzword that replaces FAANG) ‘meltdown’, tech companies underperformed vastly in August on the stock markets. The steep drop in these stocks, which cost investors over USD 600 billion, has been attributed to their overvaluation. When juxtaposed against months of investment frenzy driven by the AI hype, these trends bear a striking resemblance to the dot-com bubble, as industry observers contend with some worry.
In other news, with regulators in various jurisdictions turning the screws on corporate behavior, Big Tech giants have resorted to pulling a familiar trump card. After Spain and Canada, as the UK moves to enact stricter regulations around online safety and digital markets, Big Tech players have threatened to leave the country altogether, a move that would add further pressure to an already stagnant economy. Whether, in the midst of these woes, British regulators can stay their course will be a matter worth tracking. This increasingly common tech sector strategy threatens not only to neutralize the first generation of Big Tech regulation, but could also have chilling effects on future policy, and disincentivize governments from significant intervention.
Meanwhile, India has ushered in a new data protection law that has been received with skepticism by civil society organizations across the board, with many decrying the lost opportunity to enact substantial and robust data rights. Not only does the Act fail to provide sufficient guardrails for privacy violations or uphold good consent and data subject rights, it worryingly takes a stance towards cross-border data flows that is at odds with India’s own historic role championing Global South concerns in multilateral rule-making. In contrast, a small ray of hope this month came from one of India’s state-level legislations, as the state of Rajasthan passed the developing world’s first laws protecting gig workers. The legislation, amongst other things, erects a tripartite board, institutes new taxes for accumulating a social security fund, puts in place clear registration and grievance redressal mechanisms, and provides workers access to their own data.
Turning our focus back to Africa, this month saw two recent events in the region that capture the central tensions at the heart of its digital economy. First, at the BRICS Summit in South Africa, host president Cyril Ramaphosa highlighted the digital economy as a key area for developing countries to leverage shared knowledge and resources to become part of Africa’s growth story. But Africa’s vision for an independent and prosperous digitalization must grapple with its persisting dependence on predatory and extractive foreign actors. Consider the recent unraveling of the vaunted Sam Altman-backed ‘world coin’ crypto venture in Kenya, which aimed to double-up as a digital ID system, harvesting biometric iris scans on a vast scale. The government was forced to intervene and halt its activities after multiple consumer scams, a murky business model, and various allegations of improper conduct with personal data surfaced around the venture.
In this issue of DataSyn, two of our Big Tech and Society media fellows shed light on different facets of Africa’s burgeoning digital economy. Our first piece looks at the complex relationships that have been engendered by China’s role in Africa’s digital infrastructure. Our second piece critically examines the current state of the fintech industry in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the many problems it continues to pose.
Additionally, in continuation of our AI series, our third piece takes a look at how dominant framings of AI regulatory discourse often obfuscate the political stakes involved, and what needs to be done to recenter these.
The DataSyn Team
THE NEW DIVERGENCE
The New Silk Route: On China, Neo-colonialism, and Cyber Extractivism in Africa
Charles Ikem
China deftly expanding its reach through large-scale digital infrastructures and economic projects across Africa (and other regions) has been a defining characteristic of its digital geopolitical strategy. But what impact has this had in Africa? Charles Ikem examines the historical development of China’s presence in the continent’s digital economy, and its complex and varied repercussions.
Read on.
THE BIG EXCESS
How Fintech Became the Gateway to Predatory Lending in Sub-Saharan Africa
Rachel Achieng'
Having served as some of the earliest laboratories for fintech models, regions of Africa continue to be the playground for the industry’s most reckless and predatory instantiations. In this piece, the first of a two-part series on Africa’s financial landscape, Rachel Achieng' takes stock of Sub-Saharan Africa’s fintech woes.
Read on.
THE POLICY TABLE
Responsible AI’s Inherent Trade-Offs: Let’s Talk About Resources, Rights, and Power
Kai-Hsin Hung
Dominant framings around regulating AI often converge on the idea of ensuring adequate safety ‘guard rails’. However, as Kai-Hsin Hung demonstrates, such an understanding ignores the eminently political dimension of how AI evolves, how it is used, and who is able to benefit from it. As he argues in this piece, any genuine regulatory impulse cannot afford to not engage deeply with these questions.
Read on.
The Sins & Synergies Lounge
Given its centrality to the emergent digital-economic order, understanding the trajectories of Africa’s digitalization without a reference to China is impossible. Check out recent studies by the China Africa project that probe into such issues.
While crypto may have receded from the mainstream news cycle after its last swatch of scandals, it persists in the attempt to reinvent itself by seeking new pastures, and tragically, promising riches to the marginalized and financially under-served populations of the Global South. Read Rest of World’s sharp coverage of another spate of scamming and data extraction that the industry has unleashed in Africa.
In the midst of the endless hype around AI, many in Silicon Valley have already dismissed the environmental concerns, claiming that ways to achieve sustainability have already been discovered and underway. Yet is this really the case? Listen to this talk by Norman Bashir where he dispels this myth and undertakes a sober reckoning of the possibilities and perils around ‘Decarbonizing AI’.
Current public discourse around AI is marked by a historicity, which ignores years of critical discussion and debate in favor of the novel possibilities of tools like ChatGPT. Such a discursive myopia requires an urgent corrective. Check out IT for Change’s collated archive of AI research from a Global South Lens.
Despite being the culmination of a long, drawn-out, consultation process, the Indian government has passed a data protection legislation that is widely seen as problematic. For more analysis on India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, read IT for Change’s critical commentary on some of the key issues with the legislation.
Post-script
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