International records / OpenAlex research

Sovereignty Without Servers: Digital Markets and the AfCFTA

African public services, financial systems and cross-border payment networks run on infrastructure owned by a small number of foreign corporations. African states have answered that concentration with data localisation laws requiring sensitive data to be held on servers within their territory. Those laws are largely unenforceable: the infrastructure does not exist at the necessary scale and cannot be built at hyperscale within any plausible legislative timeframe. A gap has opened between where African law assumes control lies and where digital infrastructure is actually governed. This thesis a…