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Call for Abstracts: Who Governs Africa’s Data?

We invite abstracts of up to 500 words for a workshop at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) on 4 February 2027, hosted by the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa (FLIA) for the CIVICA DigiAfrica Research Hub. Authors of selected abstracts will circulate a draft paper before the workshop and present it in London, with a view to a proposed special section of the journal Global Policy.

Abstract deadline: Friday, 30 October 2026

The workshop

Data is increasingly an object of political contestation across the African continent. Governments, regional bodies, technology firms, donors, civil society and citizens make competing claims over who should collect, store, move, own and benefit from it. These claims are often expressed in the language of ‘data sovereignty’ or ‘digital sovereignty’. Yet what such terms mean, who invokes them and on whose behalf remains contested.

Much of the debate treats sovereignty as a property of states, judged by where data is stored or which laws apply to it. This workshop starts from a broader premise. Claims over data are made from above and from below; they are made by states and regional institutions, but also by firms, activists, researchers and the people whose data is collected and at stake. They also carry distributional consequences, shaping who gains control, revenue and voice and who bears the costs.

National approaches, for example, in Ghana and South Africa, already differ in what they take data ownership to mean. Nigeria has justified data localisation partly as a means of correcting its trade deficit in information and communications technology, while South Africa’s draft data and cloud policy treats foreign ownership of most of the country’s data centres and cloud infrastructure as a control issue. Kenya and Rwanda, by contrast, have pursued their digital ambitions through close partnerships with foreign cloud providers and technology firms. This raises various questions, including whether such strategies reduce or reproduce African states’ dependencies on foreign aid and investments.

Civil society actors often come at these questions from a different angle. Their concern is less about where data is stored and more about whose rights are protected, and who is held to account when data is misused. In Kenya, civil society organisations challenged the national digital identity system, Huduma Namba, in court. They argued that a centralised biometric database, launched before a data protection law was in force, risked enabling surveillance, excluding marginalised groups and allowing data to be repurposed. A related debate concerns infrastructure itself: the expansion of data centres raises questions about how ownership, financing and operating arrangements shape local capabilities and control over data, how the benefits are distributed, and who bears the environmental and social costs. Policy frameworks such as the AfCFTA Digital Trade Protocol, the Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa and the Continental Artificial Intelligence Strategy, along with regional and bilateral commitments, add further layers to these contests.

The workshop is the second of three convened by the CIVICA DigiAfrica Research Hub. It follows a first workshop at the European University Institute in Florence in June 2026 on digital infrastructure, governance and development pathways in Africa. In London, we turn to data governance and the terms on which African actors seek to define, claim and exercise control over data. The final workshop will be hosted by Sciences Po in the spring of 2027.

Questions we invite

  • Ownership and control. What do African governments, regulators, firms and citizens mean when they claim ownership of, or sovereignty over, data? How and why do these claims differ across countries?
  • Where data lives. What are the politics of cloud services, data localisation rules and data centre investment? Who gains control, revenue and risk from them?
  • Regional and continental frameworks. Is there a broadly endorsed African agenda for data governance? How do the African Union and regional frameworks on data governance and cross-border data flows interact with national rules, trade and investment commitments and the African Continental Free Trade Area’s work on digital trade?
  • External models. How do African actors negotiate, adapt or contest data governance models promoted by the European Union, China, the United States, multilateral lenders and technology firms?
  • Data at the coalface. How is data governance experienced by those governed through digital systems, for example, in digitised welfare and social protection, digital finance and identification? Who is included and who is excluded?
  • The concept itself. Is ‘data sovereignty’ or ‘digital sovereignty’ a useful analytical category, a political project, a rhetorical resource or some combination of the three?

We welcome contributions from political science, law, economics, anthropology, development studies, data science, and related fields, as well as from practitioners and policymakers. We particularly encourage submissions from researchers and practitioners based in Africa. Applicants should have a PhD already or 10 plus years of practice/policymaking.

Process, format and publication

From the abstracts received, we will invite eight to submit papers for presentation on Thursday, 4 February 2027. They will be presented in two 90-minute sessions of four papers each, with around 15 minutes per presentation, followed by discussion. The day closes with a public keynote (speakers will be shared in due course) and panel discussion on data and digital sovereignty, open to all, from 18:00 to 19:30.

Selected presenters must circulate a working draft of at least 4,000 words to participants by Thursday, 21 January 2027, two weeks before the workshop. The draft should set out the argument and main evidence, but it need not be complete or polished: the aim is a substantive discussion of work in progress.

The organisers intend to propose a special section of Global Policy based on the workshop. Submissions to the special section are optional, and presenting at the workshop does not guarantee publication. Authors who wish to be considered should develop their papers with one of the journal’s peer-reviewed formats in mind: research articles (up to 8,000 words) or policy analysis articles (5,000 to 7,000 words). Details of each format are on the journal’s contributor page. Full manuscripts would be due after the workshop, on a timeline we will confirm with presenters. Inclusion in a special section will be subject to the journal’s editorial and peer review processes.

How to apply

Please send the following to this form by Friday 30 October 2026:

  • A title and an abstract of no more than 500 words, setting out the question, argument, evidence or methods and intended contribution.
  • The Global Policy format you intend to develop the paper into (this is indicative and can change).
  • Whether you would present in person or online.

Key dates

  • Friday, 30 October 2026: abstracts due
  • Friday, 6 November 2026: applicants notified
  • Thursday, 21 January 2027: draft papers (at least 4,000 words) circulated to participants
  • Thursday, 4 February 2027: workshop at LSE

Logistics

The workshop will take place at LSE in London, with online participation possible for presenters. The organisers will cover catering for presenters during the workshop. We are unable to cover travel or accommodation for participants outside the CIVICA network. Applicants who would need a UK visa should note that processing can take several weeks; we can support an online presentation where travel is not possible.

Queries can be sent to Africa@lse.ac.uk.

Organisers

The workshop is organised by the CIVICA DigiAfrica Research Hub and hosted by the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa at LSE, in partnership with the European University Institute, Bocconi University and Sciences Po.