Coordinating the Digital Commons: ASEAN's DEFA, the AfCFTA Digital Trade Protocol, and Latin American Open Finance as Three Templates for Regional Digital Governance

Olaniyi Evans

Hequation Review, 2026, vol. 1, issue 2, 1-6

Abstract: Regional digital trade pacts are emerging as the binding instruments through which middle-income economies attempt to coordinate data, payment, and platform rules amid stalled multilateral negotiations. This article examines three templates in 2025–2026: ASEAN's Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA), the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Digital Trade Protocol operationalized through the African Union Digital Transformation Strategy, and Latin America's converging open-finance regulations. Using comparative document analysis and policy benchmarking, the article maps governance variables and identifies investment implications. The findings suggest that implementation maturity, not text ambition, will determine capital allocation outcomes through 2030.

Keywords: digital trade governance; regional integration; cross-border data flows; open finance; AfCFTA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 F15 F55 G38 L86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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