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Governments must develop national data governance policies distinct from data protection laws, with clear frameworks for how anonymised and aggregate data can be shared. [iStockphoto]
Every day, the world generates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data. Africa, home to 1.4 billion people and one of the fastest growing mobile populations on earth, contributes a significant and rising share of that torrent.
By 2030, the continent's data economy is projected to be worth $290 billion. Yet Africa's share of actual value captured from the global data economy remains below three per cent.
The data is here, the wealth it should be generating is not. The gap between those two facts is not a technology problem. It is a governance problem. When an international investor sits down to assess an African market, one of the first questions they ask is: what does the data say? What is the consumption trend in this sector? What is the demographic profile of this city?
