Further Reading: Global South Perspectives on Data Governance

The sources below provide deeper engagement with the themes introduced in Chapter 37. They include scholarship from Global South researchers, policy frameworks, and empirical studies.

Data Colonialism and Digital Extractivism

Couldry, Nick, and Ulises A. Mejias. The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019. The foundational text on data colonialism as a conceptual framework. Couldry and Mejias argue that the contemporary data economy represents a new form of colonialism — one that appropriates human life itself as raw material. Essential for understanding the theoretical framework that informs this chapter's analysis.

Kwet, Michael. "Digital Colonialism: US Empire and the New Imperialism in the Global South." Race & Class 60, no. 4 (2019): 3-26. A sharper, more explicitly political analysis that argues digital colonialism is a deliberate strategy of US imperial power, enforced through control of digital infrastructure, intellectual property regimes, and platform dominance. Kwet's analysis is particularly strong on the mechanisms through which infrastructure dependency creates and maintains power asymmetries.

Ricaurte, Paola. "Data Epistemologies, The Coloniality of Power, and Resistance." Television & New Media 20, no. 4 (2019): 350-365. A Latin American perspective that connects data colonialism to Anibal Quijano's concept of the "coloniality of power." Ricaurte argues that data governance is not merely a technical or legal question but an epistemic one — who has the power to define what data means, what counts as knowledge, and whose ways of knowing are valued.

India: Aadhaar and Digital Public Infrastructure

Khera, Reetika (ed.). Dissent on Aadhaar: Big Data Meets Big Brother. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2019. The essential critical anthology on Aadhaar, collecting analyses from economists, legal scholars, technologists, and social scientists. Contributors examine exclusion errors, surveillance risks, the consent problem, and the political economy of Aadhaar's expansion. The most comprehensive critical assessment available.

Nilekani, Nandan, and Viral Shah. Rebooting India: Realizing a Billion Aspirations. New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2015. Written by the architect of Aadhaar (Nilekani was founding chairman of the UIDAI), this book presents the optimistic case for India's digital public infrastructure. Nilekani argues that Aadhaar and the India Stack can leapfrog decades of bureaucratic inefficiency and deliver financial inclusion at unprecedented scale. Reading this alongside Khera's Dissent on Aadhaar provides essential balance.

Abraham, Sunil, and Amber Sinha. "Data Governance in India: A Case Study." In Data Governance in the Global South, edited by Anita Gurumurthy et al. Bangalore: IT for Change, 2022. A detailed case study of India's data governance landscape, covering Aadhaar, the DPDP Act, and the India Stack. The authors assess the gap between India's governance ambitions and its implementation reality, with attention to the government exemptions that weaken the DPDP Act.

African Data Governance

Achiume, E. Tendayi. "Digital Racial Borders." American Journal of International Law 115 (2021): 30-61. A legal analysis of how digital surveillance technologies create racialized borders — not just at physical boundaries but throughout digital systems. Achiume connects immigration surveillance to broader patterns of racial governance, providing a framework for understanding the border surveillance themes in this chapter.

Avle, Seyram, and Silvia Lindtner. "Design(ing) 'Here' and 'There': Tech Entrepreneurs, Global Markets, and Reflexivity in Design Processes." CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (2016): 2233-2245. An ethnographic study of technology entrepreneurship in Ghana and China that examines how Global South tech actors navigate the tension between local needs and global platform dominance. Relevant to understanding the conditions under which leapfrogging governance models is feasible.

African Union Commission. The Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa (2020-2030). Addis Ababa: AUC, 2020. The AU's comprehensive strategy for continental digital development, including data governance provisions. The strategy articulates a vision of data governance that balances development goals with individual rights and collective sovereignty. Available online.

Mungai, Christine, and Nanjala Nyabola. "Digital Rights in East Africa." In Digital Rights in Closing Civic Space, edited by Iginio Ferrara and Tanja Hichert. Johannesburg: Institute for Strategic Studies, 2021. An analysis of digital rights challenges in East Africa, covering surveillance, content regulation, and data governance. The authors examine how shrinking civic space — government restrictions on protest, media, and civil society — intersects with digital governance, creating environments where data protection laws may exist on paper but cannot be effectively enforced.

Latin America and Brazil

Bioni, Bruno, and Laura Schertel Mendes. "Data Protection in Brazil." In Global Data Protection in Practice, edited by Eduardo Ustaran. London: Globe Law and Business, 2022. A comprehensive overview of Brazil's LGPD, its enforcement through the National Data Protection Authority (ANPD), and its relationship to the GDPR. Bioni and Mendes provide insider perspective on the political dynamics that shaped Brazil's approach to data governance.

Gurumurthy, Anita, and Nandini Chami. "Development Justice in the Digital Paradigm: Agenda 2030 and Beyond." In IT for Change Policy Brief, 2019. A feminist analysis of digital governance in the Global South that centers development justice. Gurumurthy and Chami argue that data governance must be understood within the broader context of global economic inequality — not as a standalone policy domain but as an integral part of development strategy.

Indigenous Data Sovereignty

Kukutai, Tahu, and John Taylor (eds.). Indigenous Data Sovereignty: Toward an Agenda. Canberra: ANU Press, 2016. The foundational text on indigenous data sovereignty, written primarily by indigenous scholars. The volume articulates principles for indigenous peoples' control over data about their communities, lands, and cultures, drawing on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Directly relevant to the chapter's discussion of community data governance and the CARE Principles.

Global Indigenous Data Alliance. "CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance." Data Science Journal 19, no. 1 (2020): 43. The formal statement of the CARE Principles: Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, and Ethics. These principles extend beyond the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) that dominate mainstream data governance, emphasizing that data governance must serve the communities from whom data is derived.

Cross-Border Data Flows and Data Sovereignty

Aaronson, Susan Ariel, and Patrick Leblond. "Another Digital Divide: The Rise of Data Realms and Its Implications for the WTO." Journal of International Economic Law 21, no. 2 (2018): 245-272. An analysis of how different approaches to cross-border data flows — the US's free flow model, the EU's regulated flow model, and China's sovereign flow model — create "data realms" with distinct governance logics. The article provides essential context for understanding how Global South countries navigate between these competing models.

These readings extend the chapter's analysis across disciplines and regions. The Global South perspective is not a supplement to data governance — it is where the majority of the world's population lives and where the consequences of governance failures are often most severe.