Decolonising Global Digital Transformation

Building a global policy agenda to reshape the political economy of digital transformation and digital public infrastructure.

This event is organised by the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (UCL IIPP). Explore more IIPP events here.

About this talk:

Kalema's doctoral research critically examines the global political economy of Global Digital Transformation (GDT) and Algorithmic Governance through its multiyear case study of the World Bank Group's (WBG) GDT global policy approach, especially as strategically deployed through its Global Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) initiative, involving foundational digital identity systems, digital payment platforms, and data exchanges.

Overall, her Kalema's work introduced new core concepts for examining GDT through her 'Coloniality of GDT' framework. Key questions explored include the following:

• What is the current global political economy of Global Digital Transformation and Algorithmic Governance, and how is its global policy and governance reshaping politics, profits, power, and public value?
• What if the WBG's current GDT approach, specifically as deployed through its Global DPI efforts as the primary pathway to achieving sustainable development goals and global equity and inclusion for the global majority, is actually accelerating planetary-scale extraction, deepening societal inequality, and eroding democratic power to the detriment of human rights and wellbeing?

Exploring these questions, through her multi-year case study investigation into the World Bank Group's GDT policy and governance approach, which is the restructuring of public institutions, systems, and services. Drawing on new insights from interviews with global policymakers, researchers, public officials, human rights lawyers, technologists, and development practitioners across multiple countries and global institutions, alongside an extensive policy analysis, her research traces the World Bank Group's restructuring of global and public governance, institutions, and systems across two case settings (Kenya and Uganda). Fundamentally, GDTs through DPIs, as well as the biometric surveillance tech and digital platforms' algorithmic governance tools contained within those infrastructures, are fundamentally transforming the distribution of power, resources, and life chances worldwide, both domestically and globally.

Kalema argues that the WBG's GDT initiative is not only a technical upgrade; it is a global structural and infrastructural transformation process that today has colonial continuities. As a main global architect of GDT policy and governance through the strategic deployment of its Global DPI initiative, the WBG is laying the AI foundations that will make the current trajectory of GDT and global algorithmic governance, both structurally and infrastructurally inevitable for decades to come where it continues to remain ignored or under addressed, largely outside of robust multilateral democratic deliberation mechanisms, with especially pronounced implications for many African countries.

Kalema argues that advancing global and public health equity objectives between and across countries, and ensuring their broad distribution across societies, especially for oppressed or vulnerable groups, can provide a useful new approach for evaluating GDT for public value in a manner that aligns with rather than competes against the global common good.

Next, Kalema's research lecture concludes with an urgent provocation:

What if we measured GDT and DPI success not only through digital adoption, growth, and enrollment and metrics but also as primarily demonstrated through its commitments to global economic and social justice, material implications for human health and wellbeing, global promotion and protection of human rights and dignity for all, and expansion of democratic power through accountability in practice (not only on paper)?

In other words, what if we pursued GDT policy and governance as the building of infrastructures for liberation rather than domination?—read: decolonising global digital transformation.

Meet the panel:

• Chair: Carolina Alves, Associate Professor of Economics at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) at UCL
• Opening Remarks: Professor Rainer Kattel, Co-Deputy Director and Professor of Innovation and Public Governance at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP)
• Nai Lee Kalema, PhD Candidate at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP)
• Niels ten Oever, Co-Principal Investigator of the Critical Infrastructure Lab and Assistant Professor in the Department of European Studies, University of Amsterdam
• Damon A. Silvers, Visiting Professor of Practice in Labour Markets and Innovation at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP)
• Shoshana Zuboff, Charles Edward Wilson Professor Emeritus at Harvard Business School and Co-Director of the “Surveillance Capitalism or Democracy” research fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School Carr Center for Human Rights Policy

About PhD in Conversations:

PhD in Conversation provides a space for emerging researchers to share the core ideas of their doctoral work alongside the personal journey that shaped it. Each session brings together original research, lived experience, and an open conversation with expert panellists and the audience—bridging scholarship with public-purpose innovation.

If you have any queries around access, please get in touch with a member of the team (IIPPComms@ucl.ac.uk).

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