Strategies For Collecting Demand-side Data On Digital Technologies For Informed Policies In The Global South

The T20 aims to promote an “inclusive, sustainable, participatory, and fair global economy”’, supporting the SDGs set out in Agenda 2030. This emphasis has placed digitalisation on the core agenda of G20. It is central to SDG 9, which targets universal ICT access, and ICTs are linked to SDGs 3, 7, 12 and 13. Increased access and use of digital technologies will also result in positive progress across all 17 goals. Currently, however, we do not have data to assess progress towards these targets. A key issue constraining policymaking to stimulate digital technology adoption in the Global South is the lack of data. This is particularly so in Africa where most individuals do not have any digital footprint. Compounding digital inequality, the increasing diffusion ofAl poses new harms as the giant social networking databases feeding Al systems have no visibility on hundreds ofmillions ofpeople in the majority world, hence outcomes will ignore, underrepresent or discriminate against them. The inclusion of the African Union as a permanent G20 member, and the multi- stakeholder nature of T20 engagements, provides an invaluable platform to have constructive debates around the issues holding back digitalisation in Africa as the region with the lowest internet penetration rates, and identify interventions which can address the paucity of data to inform evidence-based policy. Brazil is another example from the Global South grappling with structural inequalities. However, it possesses well-documented historical data on how the population access and use digital technologies. This makes it a valuable case-study both for the collection of public data and for strategies to measure and address digital inclusion barriers. This policy brief will highlight the current digital data gaps, particularly in nationally representative demand-side data. Recommendations will then centre around strategies to gather reliable digital statistics as a global public good, showcasing innovations which have achieved this at a national or regional level, and propose interventions which could lead to their realisation at a global scale.