Harnessing data for development: defining a new strategy for Africa in the digital economy

Padmashree Gehl Sampath

Chapter 2 in Building Digital Technological Capabilities, 2025, pp 39-66 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The digital economy presents opportunities. But harnessing these is dependent on the creation of certain framework conditions that enable the use of data for developmental outcomes. Providing those framework conditions is a challenge for most low-income countries, especially those in Africa, given that basic institutions that promote economic change and foster businesses and enterprises, including the grant and enforcement of property rights, mechanisms of social and political accountability of change, public welfare protection, rules that mitigate social conflict, reduce the risk to entrepreneurship, and promote social cooperation, all of which are often underprovided for or absent. This chapter analyses the critical characteristics of digitally induced transformations, highlighting the limits of contemporary industrial policy approaches and suggesting a new way to structure State-market interactions with the citizen at its core, for countries in Africa.

Keywords: Digital economy; Developmental outcomes; Industrial policy; Data commodification; State-market interaction; Digital transformation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781803922355
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