Beyond AI Consumption: Digital Governance Politics and Management in the Global South

Africa is navigating a complex interplay between local needs, global geopolitics, and the corporate interests that influence the digital landscape. This is increasingly critical in public policy areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), digital infrastructure, and data governance. Competing visions on the role, applications, and future of digital technologies are converging, and distinctive but largely overlooked or misunderstood projects of nation-building and corporate consolidation have emerged, seizing digital tools as opportunities to reconfigure or strengthen power relations, sometimes in ways that are counter to individual and public rights.

As this delicate balancing act between local and globalised interests plays out, the question for this Workshop is: Will the Global South and majority poor simply consume and be consumed in this “AI playground”, or are there different questions to be asked and new possibilities to be considered?

Drawing from a South Africa-based Working Paper series sponsored by a global development partner, this session invites critical engagement and co-thinking on digital governance futures.