IGF 2024 Open Forum #21 Unlocking data for African prosperity

African policymakers have an opportunity to define a bespoke, strategic approach to data governance that ensures data produced on the continent drives local innovation, enhances public services, and fuels equitable growth while also protecting critical rights such as privacy. Importantly, no country or region has yet found the right mix of policy, law, regulation and technology to safely “unlock” data for the benefit of all. This strategic gap creates an opportunity for Africa, where the confluence of rapid digitization and efforts to implement the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, African Union Data Policy Framework and African Union Digital Transformation Strategy are building momentum for African countries to chart their own course as a common digital market. Defining a unified approach to trusted data sharing, both within and across borders, is central to ensuring data generated in Africa fuels the growth and innovation required to meet the aspirations of Africans.

The African Data Leadership Initiative (ADLI) is a peer-exchange network for African data policy decision-makers, activists and thought leaders. As a joint initiative between DIAL, Smart African and UNECA in 2024, we established a country cohort with participants from Sierra Leone, Uganda, the Gambia and Zambia.  As a multi-stakeholder peer-learning platform we convened representatives from government, CSOs, the private sector (local start-ups) as well as academia to:

- Develop a deeper comprehension of the diverse technical infrastructure essential for robust data governance practices.

- Expand and explore exposure to exemplar data strategy models from African contexts, providing valuable insights for consideration by other African countries.

- Deepen the understanding of an operationalized, people-centered/people-first approach to data governance.

- Promotes joint problem-solving and approaches to engaging non-governmental stakeholders in data policy formulation.

For this Open Forum, partners and stakeholders from the four countries who participated in ADLI will share the lessons that they have learnt during the peer-exchange learning journey. By reflecting on the implementation of key regional/continental frameworks, foundational data infrastructure, creating value and trust as well as developing integrated data exchange systems will share the insights gleaned from their ADLI participation. This session will be a robust discussion to interrogate the learnings they will carry along on the path towards safely unlocking the value of data for prosperity and social advancement on the African continent.

We will have a dedicated online moderator who will endeavour to:

1) Introduce All Speakers and share links to their contact information

2) Prompt the participation of the online participants.

3) Monitor the chat and highlight questions from the online audience which will be raised with the Onsite Moderator.