Data becoming defining 21st-century resource calls for digital justice dividends

Digital inclusion must go beyond connectivity to protect people's data, rights and ownership. [iStockphoto]

Before leaving home this morning, many of us checked WhatsApp, searched Google, watched YouTube videos, used GPS to navigate traffic, or transferred money through mobile money platforms such as M-Pesa or Zelle.

These technologies have become so integrated into our daily routines that we rarely stop to think about them. They feel convenient, indispensable, and almost invisible. However, this convenience raises an important question: Who owns our digital lives?

More specifically, who owns our data, digital identities, digital assets, and the knowledge generated from our digital activities across all stages of life?

A few days ago, I discovered something surprising. As a regular user of M-Pesa, Kenya’s mobile money platform, I learned that users can designate a next of kin for their account. Like millions of Kenyans, I use M-Pesa almost daily, yet I was unaware that this option existed. That realisation led me to a broader question: If many of us do not fully understand what happens to our digital assets after death, how much do we really understand about our digital lives while we are alive?

As societies become increasingly digital in their operations, this question matters more than ever. We now bank, shop, learn, work, communicate, access healthcare, interact with government services, and even participate in research through digital platforms.

While technology has expanded opportunities and improved lives, questions of ownership, control, and accountability often remain hidden beneath the surface.

Kenya is frequently celebrated as a global leader in digital innovation. M-Pesa has transformed financial inclusion by allowing millions of people, particularly those previously excluded from formal banking systems, to save, send, receive, and manage money through their phones.

For rural households, small businesses, and low-income communities, mobile money has opened doors to economic participation that were once closed. Yet, access does not automatically translate into ownership, control, or empowerment.

Digital inclusion is often measured by access. For example, how many people have mobile phones? How many use mobile banking? How many have internet access? These indicators are important, but they tell only part of the story.

A person may know how to use mobile money without fully understanding how their data are collected, stored, shared, or retained. They may interact with digital systems every day without knowing what rights they have over the information they generate.

They may be included in the digital economy while remaining excluded from the decisions that shape it.

This is what some scholars call predatory inclusion. People are invited into a system and may benefit from participation, but the terms of participation often remain unequal and often benefit the owners of such companies as opposed to the users who generate such valuable data, yet possess limited influence over how that data is used.

Much as communities contribute information, experiences, and knowledge, they often have little control over the outcomes. In other words, inclusion does not always mean empowerment.

Around the world, technology companies such as Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Uber, and countless other digital platforms collect vast amounts of information through search engines, social media platforms, online marketplaces, mobile applications, and digital payment systems.

Every click, purchase, search, message, ride request, and location check-in generates data. These data are analysed, organised, and transformed into economic value.

Historically, colonialism extracted land, labour, and natural resources from colonised populations. Today, some scholars argue that a new form of extraction is taking shape through data.

If colonialism was once about controlling territory and resources, digital colonialism is increasingly about controlling data, digital infrastructure, and the knowledge generated through them. Instead of gold, minerals, or agricultural products, the resource being extracted is information.

While technology companies provide valuable services, they also accumulate extraordinary power through their control of data and digital infrastructure.

Digital technology has transformed many lives in how we currently communicate, learn, work, and engage in various activities. For instance, connecting families in different geographical locations, provision of business platforms and created opportunities that were unimaginable a generation ago. But amid the excitement surrounding technological progress, questions about ownership, accountability, and justice often receive far less attention. As digital systems become ingrained in everyday life, we must consider not only who can access technology, but also who controls the data, identities, assets, and knowledge it produces.

The issue becomes even more concerning when we consider research and development work. Every year, researchers, governments, development agencies, and non-governmental organisations collect information from communities through surveys, interviews, and digital databases. Yet how often do those same communities have access to the findings generated from their participation? Participants are frequently asked to provide personal information, yet many remain unaware of how long their data will be stored; even if they knew, could they meaningfully object to how they might be reused, who has access to them, or whether they will ever be deleted once their purpose has been concluded? In many cases, communities contribute valuable knowledge but never receive feedback on the results. If people provide the information that makes research possible, should they not also have a right to benefit from the knowledge it creates?

This brings us back to the central question: Who owns our digital lives?

Do individuals own the data they generate through daily interactions? Do communities have rights over the knowledge they contribute to research? Should corporations retain indefinite control over information collected from users? How much authority should governments have over citizens’ digital identities? These questions are not merely technical. They are questions of social justice.

The challenge now is to ensure that they understand and have control over the digital systems they use. Governments, technology companies, researchers, and development organisations need to do more than provide access. They should educate citizens about digital rights, privacy, and what happens to their data throughout their lives and after their deaths. Digital platforms should make information about data use, inheritance procedures, and next-of-kin options easier to find and understand. Researchers and institutions should be more transparent about how community data are stored, used, and shared, while ensuring that participants have access to the findings their contributions help produce.

In an increasingly digital world, inclusion should mean more than simply being connected. It should mean having the knowledge, rights, and power to understand, influence, and benefit from the digital systems that shape our lives.  For example, digital inclusion may require policies that go beyond providing internet access to guaranteeing rights over digital identities and personal data. Laws such as data protection regulations, digital identity governance frameworks, and data sovereignty policies can help ensure that citizens not only participate in digital systems but also exercise meaningful control over the information and value those systems generate. In this way, inclusion becomes a question of power, ownership, and participation rather than mere connectivity.

The future of social development will be determined not only by who has access to technology but also by who owns and controls the data, identities, assets, and knowledge that technology generates.

The digital revolution has connected billions of people. But connection without ownership, participation without power, and inclusion without rights risk creating new forms of inequality in the very systems designed to bring people together. As our lives, livelihoods, identities, and memories become increasingly digital, the most important question is no longer whether we are connected. It is whether we have any meaningful control over what we create, share, and leave behind.

If data has become one of the defining resources of the twenty-first century, then the struggle for social justice must also become a struggle for digital justice. And that begins by asking a simple but profound question: Who owns our digital lives?

 -The writer is a PhD student in Global Inclusion and Social Development at the University of Massachusetts-Boston