Digital Governance: A Pathway to Inclusivity and Development

The expeditious growth of Africa's population, as well as the opportunities and challenges this poses in terms of education and training of the African youth have pointed to ever -growing interdependencies between the pivotal role of information and communication technology (ICT) and harnessing the potential of the internet. The mutual entanglement of both spheres manifests on many levels with digital governance being a vital enabler. The recent rise of big data and computational techniques have brought about new opportunities for participation, organizing and collective action by citizens. If the 20th century engineers of consent had magnifying glasses and baseball bats, those of the 21st century have acquired telescopes, microscopes and scalpels in the shape of digital technologies and analytics1. These new technologies hold incredible promise for human welfare. They offer us powerful new ways to achieve our shared commitments to each and every one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of 17 socioeconomic, political and environmental objectives forming and structuring the development agenda of the next 10 years2. Against this background, a question one may ask is: what role can the internet ecosystem community play to make this world a better place? Can digital technologies of the big data era, and the opportunities, risks and questions they raise, be leveraged as forces of positive disruption?3
This paper outlines approaches for greater transparency and improved governance of the internet to promote inclusivity and development using learnings from the modules. It makes a case that governance of internet (and by algorithms) goes beyond regulating the design and implementation of code and the technology itself and involves a wider evidence-based approach relying on risk and impact assessments, organizational approaches, and business models and strategies. The paper also focuses on the governing effects of internet algorithms in information societies.