Digital sovereignty: Africa's new battle for independence

As Africa rapidly digitalises, hidden from the boom are growing concerns about the continent’s lack of control over the data it produces and the data-processing activities involved.

Most of Africa’s digital infrastructure runs on platforms controlled by big tech corporations, a scenario that has led some experts to suggest that even an hour-long outage of these services could plunge some African nations into partial dysfunction.

These concerns are not far-fetched given that online services in important institutions on the continent, like parliaments, judiciaries, security apparatus, public service institutions, private firms, universities and hospitals, are dependent on these foreign-owned systems.

Africa’s lack of “digital sovereignty” has been the subject of serious discussions at the continental level and among strategists in recent months, reflecting a growing need to reassess the continent’s exposure.

 ‘100% exposed’ 

“The vulnerabilities are there. When you don't have the infrastructure, and you don't have the regulation, then you're 100% exposed. Because those are the things that would be the guardrails,” says Idotenyin Isaac, the head of Nigeria's Georgid Consulting, which helps organisations drive digital transformations.

“For the Western world, they will do what is best for them. That's the reality because they want to be in control, and if it means coming to harvest your data at no benefit to you, they would do it,” Isaac tells TRT Afrika.

The fears gained urgency last month when reports emerged that the US administration was considering withholding life-saving drugs to people living with HIV in Zambia after the government there refused to sign a deal that would give the US access to sensitive health data of its citizens, as well as critical minerals.

Zambia said conditions set by Washington for the more than $1 billion package did not align with its national interests.

Neighbouring Zimbabwe, equally in dire need of health support, turned down a $367m funding package under the same health initiative, citing concerns over its impact on sovereignty and national control. At least 14 African countries have accepted funding under the controversial initiative.

Experts have long warned against a return of colonialism through domination of digital technology, arguing that placing trust on big tech for digital technology concentrates political and economic power into foreign hands.

Whereas colonialism dispossessed Africans of their land and mineral wealth, tech corporations are seen as colonising the digital economy by controlling access to infrastructure and surveillance.

Yet the continent pays tens of billions of dollars per year in subscription fees to digital services provided by mainly Western companies. And with most of the money flowing directly out of the continent, there are calls for the amounts to instead circulate within Africa's own economy.

“We have to untangle years of digital dependency and build a robust local ecosystem. That starts with dealing with infrastructural deficits. Currently even governments rent cloud space from foreign tech monopolies,” reckons Waihiga Muturi, a Kenyan global innovation strategist.

“Hardware (infrastructure) is the elephant in the room. Right now, Africa operates largely as a tenant in global computing ecosystems. If we are serious about sovereignty, we must invest heavily in the physical infrastructure within our own continent. We need localised data centres and we need robust domestic cloud architecture.”

“We can’t claim a permanent seat at the digital table if we do not own the physical chair we are sitting own. That’s the geopolitics of it,” he adds.

 As things stand, experts say Africa is treated as a source of cheap labour to moderate digital content and provide essential raw data to support the training of Artificial Intelligence models.

A case in point is social media giant Meta’s legal battle in Kenya over layoffs of its Nairobi-based Facebook content moderators, who filtered out violent and graphic content from the platform, and who complained about working conditions.

“Data colonialism defines the geopolitical battle of our generation. Our natural resources have historically been extracted, our digital footprints, behaviours and content are now the ones being harvested. The future is us stopping that extraction,” says Muturi.

Silver lining

The silver lining however is that there is growing awakening to assert independence over ownership of key digital infrastructure. Considerable investments are already being made to develop new data centres to power Africa's digital boom.

“Africa is a big part of the global population. We're close to 20% of the population, but we currently only host 1% of the global data centers.  So, there's a lot to catch up on. But in every challenge there is an opportunity,” says Snehar Shah, the chief executive of the Nairobi-based iXAfrica, one of the biggest data centres in East and Cental Africa.

“Of course the big techs are welcome, but that's not stopping the deployment of the local innovation to serve the local market on a cost-effective basis.”

But a significant hurdle lies on the lack of a continent-wide regulation framework, with individual countries running on separate regulations, which experts say weakens Africa’s negotiating power against tech corporations.

“We cannot negotiate successfully as isolated nations. Africa has to come together as a whole block, we must approach internet governance as a unified block – demanding terms that shift the relationship from digital extraction to equitable, long-term partnerships,” says Muturi.

The lack of common regulations across the continent also means organisations with cross-border operations are hamstrung in digital operations, as they have to comply with disparate codes of conduct.

“The data sharing is not yet happening as well as we would want to. So for example, we are working with multiple regional and continental banks. Each bank, for example, would need to deploy the infrastructure in Kenya, in Uganda, in Tanzania, in Rwanda, in Ethiopia,” says Shah.

“But we foresee a future where, for example, one country could become like a hub, and then other neighbouring countries could then access the infrastructure in that market like it's happening in Europe,” he adds.

“It’s still early days, but at least the good thing is we're putting in place the right foundations for that to happen.”