POLICY BRIEF - Towards A Sustainable Regional Data Governance Model In Africa

Why National Data Policy Varies While African countries have similar data governance issues such as data protection and privacy, data sovereignty and security, cross-border data flow, and data localisation procedure; the majority have interestingly diverse national data governance approaches to data localisation. [...] In theory and practice, a sustainable regional data governance should take cognizance of the existing data governance policies, roles, and frameworks to how they align with the continent’s goals and values, as designed by the regional authorities. [...] National data governance policies ● They must be Afro-centric The principles of the national data governance policies should be guided and shaped by the African socio-cultural, political, and economic realities, not those of the Europe or the United States. [...] ● Tracking of data governance performance and reporting of same to Member States Lastly, the regional authorities should define and track the key data governance performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics that can help evaluate the effectiveness of the region’s data governance policies, standards, roles, and processes. [...] Feedback and insights from data teams and users must be collected and analysed to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the region’s data governance practices and to discover the opportunities and challenges for improvement.