Empowering Democracy through Data: Preliminary Project Reports from the Datafication and Democracy Fund

On August 20th, the Global South Alliance held its first meeting with the organizations covered by the Datafication and Democracy Fund. On the occasion, each of the five organizations – Like a Palm Tree (Africa), Center of Security and Citizenship Studies (LatAm), Corporación Cambio Sostenible (LatAm), Criminal Justice & Policy Accountability Project (India), and Ikigai Innovation Initiative (Africa) – had the opportunity to present the preliminary results of their projects and hear feedbacks from the GSA members.

The projects, which have very different research focus, have demonstrated to be very intertwined thematically, tackling issues related to datafication and democracy from different perspectives, while complementing each other. This was something that we could see from the organizations’ preliminary reports and the presentations, and also through the interactions between the researchers and the GSA members. 

While hearing about the researches, the participants pointed out similarities from the findings presented to their experiences in other parts of the Global South: Like a Palm Tree’s presentation on obstacles identified for a robust framework for children protection online in Nigeria, for example, resonated with experiences in Brazil, provoking a discussion on the need for international dialogue and cooperation among specialists  on the subject. 

The subject of child protection was also pointed out as an unexpected main concern of CESEC’s project on surveillance in stadiums in Brazil, and of Ikigai’s project on electoral data, connecting with the broader discussion on surveillance and the collection of biometric data that also encompasses the projects from  Corporación Cambio Sostenible  and  the Criminal Justice & Policy Accountability Project. 

These projects tackle the issues from different methodologies, from archival research to more participatory methods, such as interviews and focus groups, but all of them pointed to similar issues related to mass data collection and gaps in data protection as a democratic problem, as a threat to citizen’s rights – from livelihood, in the case of Venezuelan migrants in Colombia, to leisure in the case of  the stadiums in Brazil.

All these aspects also relate to participation, impacting not only the exercise of democratic rights but the own functioning of the democratic system, as shown in Ikigai’s research on data governance issues in electoral processes. Focusing on Nigeria and Kenya, they point to how electoral malpractices related to voter’s data have generated violation of privacy perpetuated by political agents and even violence.

In short, there were a few main cross-cutting threads we could identify in the projects:  the intersection between the advancement of data protection legislation and enforcement as a means to protect citizen’s rights – especially children -, the digital divide as an obstacle for the full exercise of those rights and the public awareness on datafication decisions as a means to prevent authoritarian practices.

About the Global South Alliance

The Global South Alliance is composed of 13 member organizations from Africa, Asia and Latin America. It was initiated in 2022, as a result of the engagement between partner organizations Aapti Institute, Data Privacy Brasil and Paradigm Initiative, which currently compose the GSA’s Steering Committee. The GSA’s work is mainly focused on unifying Global South NGOs dedicated to the advancement of digital rights. The Datafication and Democracy Fund is one of the GSA’s initiatives, focused on funding short term research projects from Global South organizations. For more information, access the link.