Bonn

Universitätsclub Bonn e. V., Konviktstraße 9, 53113 Bonn

DATA REVOLUTION IN DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION – CURSE OR BLESSING?

June 8, 2022

The last two years have accelerated digital development at unprecedented pace: In more and more countries, transformation towards digitalized services for citizens, in business and finance, but also in social sectors such as public health, is already happening. Donors and private investors alike engage substantial funding in support of targeted digital development initiatives, while governments struggle with putting in place the critically needed policies, e.g. on data governance, artificial intelligence or digital identification systems.

At the same time, big data has become available in overwhelming abundance. We can use such data to advance knowledge about human development and sustainability substantially, e.g. based on data from earth observation. This can certainly help to identify and prioritize global and local action in international cooperation and to optimize planning, monitoring and the measuring of impacts. However, the same data might as well serve to increase control and surveillance of citizens, restrict freedom of movement and expression, and to manipulate people’s behavior.

Our moderator Leonhard Nima welcomes digital development practitioners and researchers from Germany, Africa and the Middle East. In lively formats, we will get their views and those from the audience on the opportunities and challenges for international cooperation and advisory to trigger a just and responsible digital transformation in our partner countries.

The event takes place at the University Club Bonn followed by a get-together to continue the discussion and exchange.

MODERATOR

Leonhard Nima

His expertise builds on more than 10 years of sustainable entrepreneurship, social innovation and social business work experience in more than 20 countries. He has incubated, grown, advised and consulted start-ups and established organizations around the globe working in various fields, including plastic waste, circular economy, fair fashion, sustainable mobility and many more.

Download profile

SPEAKER

Thelma Efua Quaye 

is Head of Digital Infrastructure and Capacity Building Division, Smart Africa. Before her current position she was Chief Technical Officer (CTO) in Airtel Ghana Limited. Thelma worked with the ITU, UN women and African Union as a lead trainer for African Girls Can Code Initiative. She has a BSc in Electrical & Electronics Engineering from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), and an executive MBA from the Paris School of Management.

Dr. Ingmar Weber

is the Research Director for Social Computing at the Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI). His interdisciplinary research, which has been cited more than 10k times, looks at what online user-generated data can tell us about the offline world and society at large. Working closely with demographers, he has pioneered the use of online advertising data for complementing official statistics on international migration, digital gender gaps, and poverty. His work is regularly featured in UN reports, and analyses performed by his team have been used to improve operations by UN agencies and NGOs ranging from Colombia to the Philippines. He is an ACM Distinguished Member.

Björn Richter

is heading the Digital Transformation Cluster of Global and Sector Program of German Development Cooperation. Together with his team of experienced tech-experts, he is implementing the global digital development agenda of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. They aim to facilitate a human-centered digital transformation with all partners of the digital ecosystem while utilizing digital technologies for leap-frogging. Jointly with twelve EU member states, European Commission, tech-companies and civil society they also facilitating the D4D hub as “Team Europe” approach on digital development projects. Before engaging in digital development, he was working ten years in the media business, experiencing the impacts of digital transformation. Afterwards he joined German Development Cooperation and was advising senior representatives of partner countries in the ASEAN and SADC Countries as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan. These experiences can be utilized during his current assignment, as he taps into concrete experiences on the ground as well as first-hand expertise from disruption in the field of media.

Dr. Alison Gillwald

is the Executive Director of Research ICT Africa (RIA), an African digital policy and regulatory think-tank that works across 20 African countries. She is also adjunct- professor at the University of Cape Town’s Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance where she supervises doctoral students undertaking transdisciplinary research in digital policy, regulation and data governance. A former regulator she was appointed to the founding Council of the South African Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (SATRA) in 1997, having headed the policy department at the first broadcasting regulator, the Independent Broadcasting Authority established in 1994. She has advised the South African Presidency, the National Planning Commission, the Competition Commission and the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, in addition to the African Union Commission, SADC, CRASA and the SADC Parliamentary Forum. She has been commissioned by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the World Bank and the African Development Bank to undertake research and provide technical assistance to inform policy across a number of Africa countries and collaborates with networks across the Global South to build an evidence base for policy-makers and regulators. She sits on the ITU Indicators Expert Group, is a UNESCO nominee to the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence and serves on the contact group of the Internet & Jurisdiction. She was appointed on the first

ITU Task Force on Gender Issues in 1999 and  has served as the chairperson of the South African Digital Broadcasting Advisory Board from 2000, the Expert Advisory Group to African Ministers of Communications  and as the deputy-chairperson of the SA Ministerial Broadband Advisory Council in 2014. The has served on the board of the public broadcaster, the SABC, AVUSA, the Media Monitoring Project and Womensnet. She is the deputy-chairperson of Giganet, the only international academic conference dedicated to internet governance conference and serves on a number of journal editorial committees including being an inaugural associate editor of the ITU journal, Discoveries.