Beyond State vs. Corporate: Community Data Governance Models from the Global Majority
Tech Global Institute, Paradigm Initiative, InternetLab
Session 175
Presenting a Global Majority Framework for Community-Centric Data Stewardship
As the WSIS process approaches its twenty-year milestone, data governance has become a defining challenge for the Information Society. Yet mainstream debates remain trapped in a binary: data is governed either by states or by corporations. For the Global Majority — communities across Africa, Asia, and Latin America whose data is increasingly extracted from their lives, lands, and labor — neither pole adequately protects rights, distributes value, or recognizes collective agency. This session challenges that binary and surfaces governance models already emerging in Global Majority contexts. The session presents an in-progress policy brief, "Beyond Extraction: A Global Majority Framework for Community-Centric Data Governance," being co-authored by Tech Global Institute, Paradigm Initiative, and InternetLab. The brief diagnoses the data extraction crisis facing Global Majority communities and sets out a shared framework built on three pillars: data stewardship and community agency; participatory decision-making; and equitable benefit-sharing. For each pillar it offers regionally-differentiated "pathways to practice" — concrete policy asks and real-world models drawn from Africa, Asia, and Latin America — alongside recommendations for multilateral bodies, governments, and corporations. This session is a deliberate step in the brief's development: we present the current draft, stress-test it with participants, and use their input to finalize it after the Forum. The format combines a draft presentation with an interactive world café. After framing the problem and presenting the three pillars, participants apply the framework to a hypothetical case at facilitated stations. Participants interrogate who decides on data use, who holds rights, who is present or absent from decision-making, and how value is shared. This stress-tests the framework against real-world complexity and gathers structured feedback to strengthen the brief. Our vision for WSIS beyond 2025, toward 2030 and the implementation of the Global Digital Compact, is an Information Society in which communities are recognized as legitimate data governance actors. Realizing the WSIS vision of people-centered, inclusive, and development-oriented information societies requires governance models that distribute both power and benefit. This session contributes a developing framework, regional evidence, and a network of organizations committed to co-developing and advancing accountable, inclusive data governance for the next phase of WSIS.
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C1. The role of governments and all stakeholders in the promotion of ICTs for development
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C3. Access to information and knowledge
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C6. Enabling environment
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C8. Cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity and local content
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C10. Ethical dimensions of the Information Society
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C11. International and regional cooperation
The session directly advances multistakeholder governance (C1) by positioning communities as legitimate actors alongside governments and the private sector in data governance decisions. It promotes access to information and knowledge (C3) by treating data as a potential public good and examining how communities can assert control over data drawn from their lives, lands, and labor. It strengthens the enabling environment (C6) by offering policymakers a practical framework, with regionally-differentiated pathways, for designing data governance responsive to local legal, cultural, and economic contexts. The session speaks to cultural and linguistic diversity and local content (C8) by confronting the linguistic erasure and marginalization of local knowledge that extractive data practices produce, and by advocating local-language digital infrastructure. It is fundamentally grounded in the ethical dimensions of the Information Society (C10), interrogating fairness, rights-holding, consent, algorithmic transparency, and the equitable distribution of value generated from data. Finally, by convening partners and case studies from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, it embodies international and regional cooperation (C11) across the Global Majority.
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Goal 10: Reduce inequality within and among countries
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Goal 16: Promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies
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Goal 17: Revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development
By centering Global Majority communities and challenging extractive data practices, the session targets inequality within and among countries (Goal 10), ensuring value generated from community data is more equitably shared. The emphasis on participatory decision-making, rights-holding, and accountability advances just, peaceful, and inclusive societies (Goal 16), strengthening community agency and inclusive institutions. The session's tri-regional, multistakeholder design — bringing together civil society, policymakers, and the private sector across three continents — directly serves the global partnership for sustainable development (Goal 17).
- Objective 2: Expand inclusion in and benefits from the digital economy for all
- Objective 3: Foster an inclusive, open, safe and secure digital space that respects, protects and promotes human rights
- Objective 4: Advance responsible, equitable and interoperable data governance approaches