Over the years, I have authored and co-authored academic journal articles, presented papers and thought leadership ensure the technology and information policy being considered on the continent does not force a false tradeoff between welfare goals and innovation, between rights and cultural relevance, between local innovation and rigid opposition to ‘foreign’ values – for the individuals/end users.
Recently, I have also started to examine the exercise of liberal norms like privacy (specifically ‘personally identifiable’ or ‘non-personally identifiable’ or ‘indirectly identifiable’), autonomy and free speech. These through the lens of ‘socio-cultural privacy’ – the idea that privacy constructs are designed around and defined by specific exercises of power over socio-cultural discourse. So, in the last 12 months my ‘why-how-what’ think brain nodes have been pondering on what, if any, connections there are between the privacy values ‘preached’ in the global North, and the implications it bears for the socio-cultural characteristics cherished in the South which then presents significant constraints in the digital policy making environment in the global South.