In the age of hyper-connectivity, data has become the new oil, an immensely valuable resource that powers economies, drives innovation, and shapes geopolitical influence. Yet, as the digital revolution accelerates, an uncomfortable question arises: Are developing countries becoming the data colonies of the 21st century? Much like colonial powers once exploited natural resources and labor, today's tech giants are mining data from the Global South with minimal oversight, inadequate compensation, and limited benefit to the data-producing populations. This digital asymmetry is giving rise to what experts call "digital colonization," where power, profits, and control are concentrated in a few hands, primarily headquartered in the Global North.
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This digital asymmetry is giving rise to what experts call "digital colonization," where power, profits, and control are concentrated in a few hands, primarily headquartered in the Global North. For instance, the top five tech companies in the world, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft, collectively amassed over $1.5 trillion in revenue in 2023, much of it generated through the monetization of user data, including data from developing countries.
Data Colonialism: The New Face of Exploitation
Unlike historical colonialism, digital colonization does not require military occupation or visible conquest. Instead, it unfolds through the silent extraction of digital footprints, from social media interactions and online shopping behavior to biometric identification systems. In 2023, Facebook had over 423 million users in India alone, more than in any other country. However, the platform's advertising revenues from this region pale in comparison to those from North America, showing the imbalance between data generation and monetization.
Multinational tech corporations, often backed by the political and economic clout of wealthy nations, harvest vast amounts of data from users in developing countries, often without fully informed consent or transparent data-sharing agreements. A UNCTAD report from 2022 revealed that only 48% of developing countries have comprehensive data protection laws, compared to 96% in developed nations.
This harvested data is then processed, analyzed, and monetized in the Global North, where the computational infrastructure, AI expertise, and regulatory control reside. The result is a data divide that mirrors the old colonial power structure: the South produces the raw material (data), and the North refines and profits.
Surveillance, Sovereignty, and Silicon Supremacy
Governments in developing nations are increasingly embracing digital technologies, often through public-private partnerships with global tech firms. While these collaborations promise modernization, they also pose serious threats to digital sovereignty. For instance, India's Aadhaar program, the world's largest biometric ID system, now has over 1.3 billion enrolled individuals. Though it has improved access to services, concerns persist over data security and third-party usage, with over 210 reported data breaches in 2022 alone, many involving unauthorized access or leaks.
Similarly, Kenya has adopted biometric voter registration and ID systems with the involvement of Chinese companies like Huawei. In Nigeria, the National Identification Number (NIN) system, covering over 100 million citizens, relies on foreign contractors for infrastructure and maintenance, raising questions about data control and external surveillance. Moreover, many of these digital initiatives are supported by foreign firms that store data in offshore servers, bypassing local laws and leaving nations vulnerable to surveillance, manipulation, and external control. The absence of strong data protection laws in many developing countries further exacerbates this imbalance, allowing foreign companies to operate with little accountability. Citizens often lack the legal recourse to challenge data misuse, making them passive subjects in a new imperial order defined by algorithms, not armies.
The Global Infrastructure Gap
At the heart of digital colonization lies an infrastructure disparity. Most data centers, cloud computing services, and AI research hubs are located in the United States, China, and Europe. This geographical concentration gives developed nations disproportionate control over the flow, storage, and interpretation of global data. As a result, even when data originates in Nairobi, Dhaka, or São Paulo, it is often routed through and analyzed in Silicon Valley or Shenzhen. Moreover, developing countries are heavily reliant on these platforms for everything from public service delivery to education and health data management.
Only less than 5% of data centers are located in Africa and South Asia, even though these regions are home to over 60% of the world's population. Furthermore, local tech industries struggle to compete. Moreover, tech monopolies dictate the terms of access and participation. Google, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft dominate the cloud infrastructure, forcing developing countries to rely on foreign platforms for everything from education and healthcare to national security. This dependency reduces the agency of developing nations to build homegrown digital ecosystems or shape global standards on data ethics and AI regulation.
Algorithmic Inequality and the Reinforcement of Colonial Norms
The implications of digital colonization extend beyond data extraction. AI systems and algorithms, trained on predominantly Western datasets, often perform poorly in contexts they weren't designed for. Social media moderation algorithms have consistently mishandled content in non-Western languages, including Arabic, Burmese, Swahili, and Tagalog. In 2021, Facebook's internal reports acknowledged its failure to curb hate speech during the Tigray conflict in Ethiopia, due to a lack of content moderators who understood the local language and context.
Additionally, facial recognition technologies have been shown to perform poorly on darker skin tones, and content moderation systems regularly censor or misinterpret non-Western languages. These algorithmic failures are not merely technical glitches; they reflect a deeper structural bias in who creates technology and whose realities it centers. Furthermore, platform economies, like ride-hailing and delivery apps, often exploit labor in developing countries under the guise of entrepreneurship. These digital workers, like their colonial-era counterparts, are paid meager wages while the platform owners accumulate wealth and data.
Resistance and the Path Toward Digital Decolonization
Despite these challenges, resistance is growing. Countries like India, Brazil, and South Africa are advocating for data localization laws, requiring companies to store and process data within national borders. The African Union's Digital Transformation Strategy emphasizes regional sovereignty over digital infrastructure, aiming to reduce dependency on foreign firms. Grassroots movements and digital rights organizations are also calling for a new framework of "data justice," one that prioritizes transparency, consent, equitable access, and community control over digital resources. Open-source platforms, local tech startups, and South-South digital cooperation are gaining traction as alternatives to the hegemonic models of the Global North.
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Grassroots initiatives, such as Mozilla's Common Voice Project, are helping to develop open-source voice datasets in underrepresented languages, while digital rights groups like Access Now and Paradigm Initiative are advocating for data justice, transparency, and user consent across the Global South. However, true decolonization demands systemic change. It requires global governance reforms, redistribution of digital infrastructure, and support for South-South collaboration to enable countries to set their digital futures.
Digital colonization is not a distant dystopia; it is unfolding now, quietly reshaping the global order through data extraction, algorithmic bias, and infrastructure dependency. Developing countries risk becoming data-rich but power-poor, repeating the exploitative patterns of colonial history in virtual form. To avoid becoming the new data colonies, these nations must assert their digital sovereignty, invest in local innovation, and demand fairer terms of digital engagement. Only then can the promise of the digital age be reclaimed, not as a tool of control, but as a force for equity, empowerment, and liberation.
