Datafication and Digital Rights in East Africa

Exploring public communications and the informal economy in Kenyan, Ethiopian and Somali contexts

Bus driver in Ethiopia using his smartphone. Nebiyu.s (Wikimedia/CC BY-SA), 2015.

About The Network

More and more aspects of people’s daily lives in East Africa are mediated through digital platforms. As internet connectivity continues to expand at a rapid pace, ever larger numbers of people are using networked devices, and thereby producing increasing amounts of data.

Little is known in global South contexts about the processes that harvest and commercialise data, and how they relate to citizens’ rights and agency

This ‘datafication’ can be a source of value for many different actors – states, businesses big and small, civil society organisations and individuals. It is harvested in multiple ways by the devices and platforms people use, fed back into technologies for everyday activities, and informs how digital platforms operate and how we interact with them.

This one-year UKRI-funded network project brought together in 2020/21 a wide range of researchers, civil society organisations and tech-sector representatives who are active in Ethiopian, Kenyan and Somali contexts in order to explore how digitisation and datafication are reshaping public communications and the informal economy. Our network examines how the ‘datafication’ of everyday experiences and economic activity affects the nature of digital rights for citizens, vis-à-vis states, the market and each other.

Our network project is hosted at LSE and on this website you will find more details about who is involved and the type of activities we are undertaking. Our current discussions are aimed at producing a series of blog posts from the region highlighting emerging issues and needs for further research.

Blog

Contact us for any questions

If you have any questions about the network then please get in touch.