Digital Sovereignty and the African Data Governance Imperative

Data has become a strategic resource, and like the strategic resources before it, it is being extracted from Africa and refined elsewhere. The value created from African users' behaviour, biometrics and transactions accrues overwhelmingly to platforms and jurisdictions beyond the continent's regulatory reach.

From extraction to governance

Digital sovereignty does not mean digital isolation. It means establishing the legal, infrastructural and institutional capacity to govern how data generated in Africa is stored, processed, monetised and protected. That requires interoperable data-protection regimes, investment in local cloud and connectivity infrastructure, and continental rules that prevent regulatory arbitrage between member states.

Without such frameworks, the AfCFTA's digital trade protocol risks entrenching the very dependencies it was meant to dissolve. With them, Africa can convert its position as the world's fastest-growing digital market into genuine bargaining power over the terms of the data economy.