November 30, 2021

Digital Governance Index

With the explosion in digital technologies and data, countries across are grappling with effective ways to address the threats emerging in the digital space as well as provide supportive structure for digital technologies uptake. At present, at least 66 percent of countries in the world has at least a form of data protection laws. By data governance, we mean the processes and laws available in managing the availability, usability, integrity, and security of the data in the digital economy. African continent is not left out in the emerging structure with also proliferation of data governance and policies. However, UNCTAD report in 2020 noted that African region has the lowest adoption rate of the new technology and data protection laws.

CSEA has collected vast dataset to dive deep into the scope and coverage of digital development and evolution of data governance principles in Africa. This is under our project – Strengthening Data Governance in Africa. The Digital Governance Index was designed to evaluate Africa’s level of digital development. The Index covers 54 African economies and is derived utilizing 21 dimensions to assess performance across three indicators

We performed detailed analytics (click here) on cross-country performance in these indicators.

The index is expected to be an indicator for assessing African’s digital evolution and uptake. This will help to pinpoint early and late adopters of the digital space as well as their pace. With awareness of the Digital Governance Index, governments and key stakeholders can adapt and integrate policy initiatives to strengthen requisite skills, provide efficient and inclusive digital services to all; bridge digital divides to order to fulfill the principle of leaving nothing behind while fostering economic development. Digital Governance Index will provide policymakers at national and regional level with information to support decision on digitalization policies.