Frameworks for Data Governance and the Implications for Sustainable Development in the Global South

Abstract

While the digital transformation opens up new opportunities for convergence of the global south in terms of technological leapfrogging, knowledge spillovers and access to new market platforms, it also throws up some daunting competitive and governance challenges. These include: keeping pace with advanced markets as they embrace new innovation-accelerating technology; dealing with the economic and political governance challenges of the data-driven economy that are only now starting to be addressed in the advanced countries; managing trade relations with the advanced countries; and coping with the looming changes in the division of labour globally between human and machine, and between the north and the south. This note explores these issues and draws provisional conclusions about the prospects for sustainable development in the global south in the brave new world of the digital data-driven economy.

Keywords: data-driven economy, global south, developing countries, governance, digital platforms, Internet of Things, superstar firms, surveillance capitalism

JEL Classification: F63, O32, O47