Datafication and Digital Rights in East Africa

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Sitting within the theme of Digital Rights, the Datafication and Digital Rights in East Africa Network brings together social scientists, technical practitioners and policy advocates to explore ways to render the 'black boxes' around datafication and algorithmic power with regard to citizens' social and economic lives in East Africa more transparent. It aims to lay the groundwork for challenge-led research that interrogates how datafication is experienced, interpreted and contested in two sectors of everyday life, the public sphere and the informal economy, and in three Eastern African countries: Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia. At the core of this network is a partnership structure that includes technical practitioners and researchers at its core. Led by Professor Alcinda Honwana, network partners provide a breadth of sectoral expertise and country-contexts, and research and practitioner perspectives.This Network recognises there are both huge opportunities and challenges around datafication in social and economic activities. In policy and academic domains, attention to the ways public-private partnership can leverage the developmental potential of big data is growing, for example, using data analytics to bring financial services to informal entrepreneurs. Equally, there are strong concerns are voiced over the ways that technology companies harvest and commercialise the data used to 'train' algorithms underpinning their platforms, in ways often unknown to the user. This Network accepts and confronts both of these perspectives, setting up a collaborative structure through which to unpack the multi-dimensional, complex and context specific features of datafication in East Africa.Network partners will operate through three working groups: two sector-focused working groups exploring datafication processes in, first, the public sphere and, second, the economy, and a third working group on Knowledge translation and public engagement. Each working group will cover social science, policy and technical perspectives. The two sector-focused working groups will be tasked with developing frameworks of understanding that take into account five complex and intersecting dimensions of datafication processes: 1) Back end processes; 2) Front end user experiences; 3) Data Governance and management, and their linkages to citizen rights; 4) Organisational structures and practices; and 5) the regional and international context. They will explore these dynamics in their sector area, as well as discuss together at network-wide workshops to consider cross cutting practices and issues. The task of the third working group, in conversation with the other two, will be to set up channels for wider engagement and conversation around the network's conversations, specifically building on the partners' experience and wider positioning. This includes using local-language podcasts to spark conversation, supporting capacity building of youth and students around visualising insights, and creating an interactive online journalism feature. This emphasis on wider engagement is crucial in order to ensure that the network remains driven by and linked in to priorities and challenges around rights on the ground. These efforts will form the foundation for developing collaborative grant proposals to dig deeper into processes of datafication in different contexts, what they mean for digital rights, and how governance, regulation and technical bodies might respond, including possibilities to inform technological development.The concrete outputs of the Network in its first year will be: 1) established and sustainable patterns of working collaboratively; 2) active communication with policy and practitioner bodies in East Africa; 3) new frameworks of understanding of datafication processes in the economy and public sphere; and 4) a concrete and ambiguous grant proposal to extend research and engagement, and inform technological development.