9.1 Introduction

The book has presented the views of various authors’ findings on data governance frameworks in Africa. It is a primer in creating a platform for raising awareness on basic principles/tenets of international norms on data governance. The experiences and practices shared from across the globe and Africa in particular, will effectively promote and advocate for data governance protocols in the era of digital revolution. The assessment of the potentials of improving the digital market to enhance benefits to African consumers, governments, and businesses, is well articulated in each of the chapters. This chapter draws conclusions building from the findings of the various authors and further provides recommendations on data production, consumption, and utilization.

9.2 Data Governance Frameworks

Data governance frameworks require a delicate balance between data sovereignty, increased productivity, and accountability. While data sharing is expected to improve living standards through improvements in productivity growth due to non-rivalry and infinite reusability of data, leading to increase in scale, there is need to minimize data misuse and exploitation to ensure data safety. Policy makers can play a role in maintaining the balance between data safety and improving lives by putting in place a clearly defined data governance framework integrated with a data strategy that improves data sovereignty, strengthens Africa’s competitiveness, and cross-country collaboration in this digital age. An effective data governance framework should incorporate infrastructure, technical protocols, laws and regulations, and institutions that promote secure use of data and enhancing the rights to privacy.

To promote regional connectivity, a pan-African data governance infrastructure that brings about a single market for data that allows for creation, use, and reuse of data by individuals across the continent and spurring economic growth and development should be out in place. The framework must adhere to the principles of accountability, data accuracy and quality, and interoperability and standardization. The costs of compliance to such a framework should be low to promote equity in access and competition.

9.3 Value Chain Approach to Data Production, Use, and Governance

A value chain approach to data production, use, and governance in Africa was found to be of low quality with respect to a wide range of issues including relevance, impartiality, and equal access; professionalism; accountability; prevention of misuse; cost-effectiveness; confidentiality; legislation; national co-coordination; international coordination and cooperation and documentation. This has been driven by a myriad of challenges but key among them, the inability of African National statistical offices (NSO) to work effectively due to lack of political and institutional independence, which has weakened the managerial and technical ability to generate quality of official statistics. Evidence shows that legal autonomy enhances the trustworthiness of NSOs thus, enabling them to attract and sustain funding from both domestic sources and development partners. Other challenges include weak basic statistical data systems, low use of non-traditional sources of data, lack of a comprehensive data user’s engagement strategy, weak coordination of the NSS, inadequate data dissemination systems, lack of a strategy to enhance uptake of official statistics, inadequate funding, and inadequate human resources.

Improving production and use of official statistics as well as governance of official statistics processes, requires that the legal framework governing production of official statistics should ensure that produced statistics are accurate, relevant, timely, comparable, consistent, and impartial in line with the fundamental principles of official statistics as well as African Charter on Statistics. Secondly, enhancing the capacity of NSOs to coordinate the NSS and formation of partnerships with other data producers outside NSS to supplement official statistics, will result in efficient and effective administrative of data systems and will reduce data gaps. African NSOs should develop and enhance the capacity of their staff through hiring addition staff and providing technical training to enhance their technical skills for national statistics data collection and management. Institutionalize knowledge management systems for transfer of managerial and technical skills from experienced staff to newly employed employees and ensure smooth running of operations and strengthen institutional memory.

9.4 Legal and Regulatory Frameworks for Data Protection

Data protection through legal regimes and regulations to ensure free flow of data, open data regimes, and cyber security found that management of big data would always involve the handling of personal data, hence the activation of data protection principles. Very few African countries have binding instruments with provisions on various principles that persuasively impart data governance. Out of 55 African countries, only 30 have fully dedicated data protection laws, and 19 of them have established DPAs to enforce compliance with the laws, this means that there is a weak data legislative and enforcement framework.

There is a lack of trust and confidence amongst African states in developing a unified regulatory system, because of the high value personal data held within each territory. It is imperative that a trusted data environment grounded in the rule of law; comprehensive institutional arrangements and regulations; and competent institutions responsible for overseeing the use of public and private data is established as soon as possible. Active dialogue through multi stakeholders’ consultations that involves collaboration with governments, private sector, data protection authorities with the objective of negotiating of mutual assistance agreements that will guarantee similar protection of data in contracting member states and pledges to investigate and prosecute cross-border cybercrimes comprehensively, will moderate governance of movement of cross-border data.

A comprehensive legal and regulatory framework for data governance will require that African countries ratify the Malabo Convention and strengthen their respective municipal data protection legal frameworks in a manner that compliments public and private organizational management of personal data, within and outside Africa. The transborder cooperation of national DPAs envisaged by the regional treaties ought to be encouraged and strengthened, to boost enforcement of regional and municipal data protection laws, with the aim of enhancing trans-border flow of data and international data governance within the confines of uniform cross-border data protection rules.

A legal and regulatory entry point for data protection is though the African Continental Free trade Areas Agreement (AfCFTA) and the Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa (2020–2030) that seek to increase e-commerce and digital trade in Africa, it is important to consider how supporting the free movement of data across Africa can enhance these efforts. It has been shown that cross-border data flows are instrumental and have the potential to greatly influence a new economic resurgence for the continent, as can be drawn from experiences of countries or regional bodies that have adopted a liberal approach to data regulation.

9.5 Digitalization and Financial Data Governance

Financial digitalization has been led by financial technology companies (FinTechs), this has resulted in increased productivity and more financial resources being made available and affordable. Digitalization in the financial sector is quickly evolving and this requires a financial data governance framework to deal with the challenges affecting collection, processing, quality, and security of collected data. Given the emerging trends, policy makers should pre-emptively address these challenges by continuously reviewing and enhancing the institutional frameworks that enhance the operation of FinTechs that develop financial transactions platforms and applications. A dialogue on financial-data policy and governance in Africa is essential and can be facilitated by AERC. Such a forum is the first step towards bringing together practitioners, scholars, policymakers, and institutions to lay the groundwork for the governance of financial data. A key advantage will be that it will set the pace and agenda for financial data governance research and dissemination of high-impact findings and recommendations for application across the continent.

9.6 The Economics of Blockchains in Africa

The emerging blockchain technology has the potential to boost levels of productivity and unlock capital flows to underserved sectors. This is influenced by increasing returns of information as an input to production to spur economic growth. Even though blockchain technology is gaining traction at the international level, this might not quickly permeate the African continents due to the low lower levels of Internet access, lower quality of Internet connections, and higher cost of access. This implies that blockchain innovations is likely to be segmented at the household level, with higher levels of adoption amongst better-off households. The large informal Africa Market, which is estimated to generate 83% of employment particularly for the youth, with a low asset base will result in most African countries being unable to leverage on these technologies to increase their productivity. The integration of blockchain to improve the visibility of the informal sector, through transparent tracing of transactions or securing of property and asset rights, would potentially have a transformative impact on the sector by reducing levels of credit rationing. Informal contracts and tacit agreements, which tend to thrive in informal sectors will create uncertainty given that most players in this sector rely on social capital.

These challenges can be overcome by creating an enabling and conducive policy and regulatory framework that can be used to tap the existing potential for blockchains. These frameworks must be incentive-compatible, so that agents within the networks realize the value of adherence to the frameworks. Data protection and privacy must be enhanced within such frameworks, with an option for the development of markets for the responsible sale of data. The utilization of smart contracts can strongly enhance the ability to contract by automatically executing actions that have been agreed upon ex-ante, once certain preconditions have been fulfilled, within and established legal framework.

9.7 Further Research

Several areas require further research:

  1. 1.

    Identification and prioritization of key strategic interests across the continent that will benefit the most from the implementation of a data governance framework, as well as quantifying the value of the framework.

  2. 2.

    Determining strategies to increase the pace of digitization of offline public data sources, while also increasing access to already digitized public data.

  3. 3.

    Mapping infrastructure gaps and cost-of-access disparities at the subnational and cross-country level.

  4. 4.

    The legal, policy and regulatory framework for optimal implementation of effective data governance.

  5. 5.

    The effects of blockchain data on businesses—micro, small, medium, and large enterprises.

  6. 6.

    The efficiency, technical capacity, and deficiencies inherent in networks of anonymous users, and its application within the African context.