Digitalization and Financial Data Governance in Africa: Challenges and Opportunities

The increasing influence of technology firms underscores the need for global monitoring and a regulatory framework capable of accommodating the competing priorities of different countries and stakeholders while supporting inter-jurisdictional coordination and minimizing the risk of regulatory fragmentation. [...] To help meet this need, this issue paper analyses the impact of digitalization and data governance in the financial sector and focusses on the challenges and emerging opportunities for private and public organizations across Africa. [...] Therefore, effective data governance may require rethinking organizational design to accommodate a balance between the setting of standards, strategic direction and execution—a balance necessarily affected by data complexity (which increases with the scope of business operations), the speed with which core data evolves and the maturity of the underlying and predominant technology. [...] 89, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UDESA) outlined some areas in which the use of open data and Big data analytics could be considered useful (UDESA, 2020), such as in attaining real-time reactions to changes in economic phenomena, facilitating coordination and collaboration across different stakeholders in the financial system and enhancing public trust and counteri. [...] The question that follows then is: What have been the linkages between different levels of data governance and resource management? Challenges and risks associated with big data in the financial sector As FinTechs expand the geographical limits of the financial sphere, initiating new products and offerings based on copious financial data, they complicate the predicament of regulators (Wójcik, 2021.