When: 1st - 3rd September 2020
Full Programme and Registration Here
Data is a resource that is remaking politics and markets in East Africa and beyond. Join us to explore the themes in workshop format.
As more and more commercial and social life is routed through digital networks, it not only provides enhanced efficiencies and lower costs. It also creates new sources of value, namely the residual data about transactions and behaviour. This data is now captured by a variety of firms — including social media, advertisers, and mobile network providers — who collate, analyse, and monetise it. Some providers even find it fruitful to give away services for free in order to accumulate user data. Big data analytics undergird the growth of the digital credit sector, including in Kenya where more than 50 such firms track phone usage in order to offer loans. In other cases, firms use data internally, to refine services; the expanding off-grid solar sector, for instance, collects information on energy usage in order to monitor and maintain their infrastructure. Other data is sold as a commodity or directed toward changing behaviour among users.
This workshop will explore modes of developing data markets, both in the sense of expanding their reach and worth, but also with an eye to how this new arena can be used for developmental purposes, including to meet the Sustainable Development Goals. In particular, the workshop will draw on the experience of East Africa’s three largest economies (Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda), working with industry, academia, and government to examine the emerging market for data.
Sessions Summary:
- Regulating Data (1 September; 11.00-12.30 BST [British Summer Time])
- The Growth of East Africa's Data Economy (1 September; 13.00-14.30 BST)
- Data + Money (2 September; 11.00-12.30 BST)
- Data + Digital Labour (2 September; 15.00-16.30 BST)
- Surveillance, Privacy & Identification (3 September; 11.00-12.30 BST)
- Equity & Inclusion in Data Economies (3 September; 13.00-14.30 BST)
The Developing Data? project is organised by the Collaboration on International ICT Policy in East and Southern Africa (CIPESA), Strathmore University’s Centre of Intellectual Property & Information Technology (CIPIT), and the University of Edinburgh’s Centre of African Studies (CAS).