Promoting Digital Public Goods: Rethinking Data Governance and Responsible AI in Africa

The data-driven digital revolution presents an unprecedented opportunity for low- and middle-income counties (LMICs) to harness digital resources that have potential to accelerate development objectives. Consequently,  improving access to and discoverability of digital public goods (DPGs) is crucial.

According to the UN Secretary-General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation, DPGs include not only open-source software, but open-source: content, artificial intelligence (AI)  models, standards, and data.

Data as a DPG is vital, as the amount of data produced continues to grow exponentially with the data-driven digitalisation of socioeconomic activity. Data is critical to understanding current challenges, anticipating problems, building future resilience, and developing prospective solutions for organisations, governments, businesses, and civil society.

Robust data governance is needed for African governments to maximise the benefits of data access and sharing, while addressing related risks and challenges.

A sound data governance framework  goes beyond privacy and security considerations and acknowledges that collecting data alone has no value if it does not promote demand, usability, and impact.

Robust data governance guides best practices for responsible,  ethical data innovations  particularly in the context of leveraging interdependent data-driven digital technologies such as AI and machine learning (ML). A robust data governance framework is also an important component of enabling better quality and more granular data to achieve development goals, and ensure people’s digital rights are protected  through policy tools and frameworks that ensure just public data value creation  and responsible AI (RAI). 

AI foundation models, standards, and data as DPGs hold immense promise in advancing technology for the greater good of society. By promoting openness, ethics, inclusivity, and global collaboration, it can help create a future where RAI-driven solutions contribute to solving complex challenges, foster economic development, and improve the quality of life for people around the world, and the planet.

Further reading can be found on this blog, and policy brief.