Digital Colonialism? Assessing the Nexus between Power Relations in Data Governance and Africa’s Gainful Participation in Electronic Commerce (E-Commerce): A Case Study of Kenya and Uganda

Abstract

Characterised by big data, digitalisation now underpins the social, economic, and political fabric of modern life. It marks the dawn of what is widely termed the digital economy. The primacy of data is no longer open to question. Seven of the world’s ten most valuable companies, by market capitalisation, are built upon it. From this foundation, new business models have emerged. These models are refined, efficient, and relentless in monetising platform user data through targeted advertising or transmuting it into the machinery of E-Commerce. Increasingly, policy and academic discourse returns to a central concern, i.e., how data is governed, how it moves, where it accumulates, and in whose hands it ultimately resides. This determines a country’s capacity to participate meaningfully in E-Commerce. In this epoch, data is not merely an asset. It is the resource, often dubbed the ‘engine’ or ‘new oil’ of the digital economy. Seemingly aware of both its promise and its consequence, governments are advancing data governance frameworks, often through international agreements that facilitate free cross-border flows, even as they shape and at times constrain them.

This dissertation examines the often complex and obscured nexus between data governance and E-Commerce participation in Kenya and Uganda through the analytical lens of Gill’s new constitutionalism. As the digital economy expands, data has assumed a position of quiet dominance, driving global economic transformation. However, beneath this expansion lies a more disturbing reality, i.e., data governance structures remain asymmetrical, with power increasingly concentrated in the hands of big tech corporations. These can be classified under Global Platform and Cloud Giants (e.g., Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook/Meta, Apple, Huawei, ZTE, Alibaba, and Uber); fintech infrastructure giants (e.g., Mastercard and Visa); and digital infrastructure corporations (e.g., Samsung, Dell, Sony, IBM, Cisco Systems, Siemens, Bosch, Lenovo, Nvidia, and Philips). Through the reach of such Big Tech, patterns that echo an older model of extraction and dependency are emerging. As a result, while rarely declared, digital colonialism is enacted. Digital latecomers like Kenya and Uganda are not excluded, but are rather incorporated, albeit on unequal terms. This is compounded by a persistent ambiguity in the absence of a shared understanding of what data is and how it should move across borders.

There are significant difficulties in reconciling the notion of national sovereignty traditionally associated with country territories and the borderless nature and openness of the digital space in which data flows. In the absence of a coherent global strategy to govern E-Commerce, competing interests among actors in the data and E-Commerce value chain continue to assert themselves, shaping policy in divergent and often conflicting directions. Within this dissertation, four interrelated variables are brought into focus, i.e., the opacity of data governance and E-Commerce structures, the competing interests of value chain actors, the evolution of data governance discourse, and its implications for emerging actors such as Kenya and Uganda.

To answer these questions, this dissertation examines how power relations, embedded, structured, and often concealed within data governance models, shape the prospects for gainful participation in E-Commerce. It considers how Big Tech consolidates control over data, influences the direction of policy, and, in doing so, constrains the competitiveness of domestic platforms. By placing Kenya’s comparatively advanced ecosystem alongside Uganda’s more nascent landscape, the study reveals a shared condition: the challenge of harnessing data within systems not entirely of their own making. A qualitative approach, drawing on case studies and expert interviews, enables a closer examination of the political economy that underpins data governance.

Results revealed that neoliberal lock-ins, data extractivism, and incoherent data regulatory frameworks hamper equitable participation in E-Commerce by small actors, especially start-ups and SMEs. Additionally, the dissertation detects prospects for aligning data policies at national, regional, and continental levels, stressing the importance of a Pan-African Data governance strategy. Lastly, the dissertation calls for rebalancing power relations in data governance to ensure that latecomers to digitalisation are not merely participants, but decision-makers, capable of regulating cross-border data flows, of disciplining dominant firms, and of ensuring that local actors are not edged out of the very markets they seek to enter.

In terms of contribution, this dissertation complements the debate on data localisation and safeguarding state regulation of data, offering practical policy recommendations to promote inclusive and gainful participation in E-Commerce by African countries. Academically, the dissertation spreads the application of the new constitutionalism concept to the digital economy by offering a fresh framework for examining data governance and E-Commerce. It also contributes to new academic scholarship on the manifestations of digital constitutionalism, i.e., through new digital (data to be specific) rules and constitutions which seek to circumscribe the power of States in regulating economic (trade, investment, fiscal), social (health, environmental, education) and political policies, thereby guaranteeing more power and domination by (transnational) corporations.