BY GETACHEW MINAS
It is well known that Western technology companies rely on user data globally. Data protection laws and regulations emerged to ensure ethical use of these data. D. Coleman revealed that these laws and regulations do not exist uniformly in the infrastructure-poor African countries, including Ethiopia. Western technology seeks to ensure its presence in these countries.These conditions provide an ideal situation for digital colonialism. Digital colonialism refers to a modern-day “Scramble for Africa” where large scale tech companies extract, analyze, and own user data for profit and market influence.
The African countries, which are data sources, remain only with“nominal” benefit. Under the guise of altruism, large scale tech companies can use their power and resources to access untapped data on the continent. In the absence of “strong” and reliable user data protection laws in Africa, including Ethiopia, western tech companies exploit the situation. Because of their ownership of data “infrastructure” these companies exploit data as a resource for profit and a myriad of uses including predictive analysis. It may be thought that “strengthening” data protection laws will be a barrier to digital colonialism. But, regardless of their relative strength or weakness, data protection laws have “limits.”
An analysis of data protection laws and documented actions of large scale tech companies shows that those legal limits create several loopholes. Digital colonialism includes “violations” of data privacy laws. It involves unchecked mass concentration of data without competition enforcement. It also involves “uninformed consent.” Coleman pointed out that digital colonialism puts limits to the nation-state privacy laws. This situation is aggravated by the social, political and economic power imbalances and decades of resource pillaging. It is inherited from the colonial history of Africa when many countries faced imperialist aggression through military invasions, land conquests, economic exploitation, genocide, and violent resource extraction at the behest of colonial powers.
The colonialist invasion of Africa was formalized at the Berlin Colonial Conference, where the colonial powers gathered to develop a plan for the scramble of Africa. That upset and disrupted the social, economic, and political landscape of Africa forever. Under the guise of White supremacy, deeply ingrained anti-Black sentiment, and unchecked power, European powers carved up the continent in what has become known as the “Scramble for Africa.” They created arbitrary colonial boundaries and they imposed forced subjugation of African peoples. Though unsuccessful, the Italian colonialists had tried to subdue Ethiopians using local traitors or “bandas” as instruments of invasion.
At the end of the Berlin conference, the powers present signed the General Act that had legal effect on their new territories. This was done under the premise that African nations had no sovereignty and no legal claim over their state, land, or resources.This, coupled with the beliefs inherent within the White imagination that African peoples were “evolutionary” backward and undeveloped and that it was a European “responsibility” to act as trustees of Africa until Africans were mature enough to govern themselves. This set the ideological tone for ruthless colonization. European powers’ proliferation of claims in Africa was characteristically hasty. Thus, by 1900, European states claimed most of the African territory.
Control of resources by colonialists:There was a staunch belief that the economic, and thus political, future of an industrial country hinged on exclusive “control” of its markets and raw materials. Accordingly, as Stelios and Elias revealed, the colonial powers stole from the African countries, violently extracting raw materials such as copper, cotton, rubber, tea, gold, diamonds, and tin.At the center of this pillaging was a simple colonialist economic agenda, to provide maximum economic benefit at a minimal price. Accordingly, investing in industrialization, improving the production processes, or strengthening the overall economy of the colonies was “not a priority.”
The colonial powers refused to process the raw materials in Africa, sending the raw materials to Europe to be processed. They “eliminated”the role of Africans in the export business and robbed them of any economic profit. They abolished the potential resource flows that could have resulted from processing raw materials in the continent. Although some colonial powers did invest in transportation infrastructure such as railways, such investments were strictly for the benefit of facilitating the efficient transport of raw materials and not for the enrichment of the countries themselves.Simply put, the infrastructure that was developed was designed to “exploit” the natural resources of the colonies. Italy, for example, had built a network of roads in Ethiopia for controlling the hinterland, but it was hampered by the patriotic fronts. Earlier, it had tried to subdue the country, but had been defeated at the Battle of Adwa.
Corporations, aiding in this colonialist economic agenda, also played a dominant role in colonial expansion. A number of companies were granted trading monopolies by their respective governments.Their monopoly over trade allowed these corporations the power to safeguard this monopoly and the power to exert rights over their countrymen who lived and worked within the African territory. The granting of monopoly status by colonialist governments made these highly risky ventures safer for investors with profit as the primary motive.
Investing in trading companies emerged as one of the earliest forms of venture capital. As money could be raised in return for shares, profits could be divided among shareholders, and shares could be transferred among members and outsiders. The trading companies were used as weapons for colonial expansion and as additional revenue streams for the emerging economic system of “industrial capitalism.” The experience of companies had helped establish the corporate form as a dominant force for settlement and colonization. The wave of colonization by trading “companies” proved to be robust. This strength was gained by violence, and a virtual absence of competition in extracting raw materials and resources.
Indirect colonial rule: Trading companies expanded “indirect” colonial rule through possessing new protectorates or spheres of influence. They exploited “local” factions and rivalries by arming them in exchange for better trading deals. They established paramilitary forces or native bandas to facilitate trading goals and increase profit. These helped in laying the foundation for the eventual mass exploitation of mineralresources and agricultural opportunities across Africa, including Ethiopia.The control of territories by companies was designed for the “explicit” purpose of making business. It inevitably meantthat the territories were administered simply for profit.
In connection with colonial expansion, there appeared a brief revival of the type oforganization known as the “chartered” company. The hallmark of such firm was privileged company or sovereigncompany, with “authority” to govern as well as to carry on commerce in territory placed under its jurisdiction. Such companies were empowered to establish forts and police systems, to lay out roads, encourage colonization, levy duties and taxes. Initially, these companies were not interested in developing local industrialization outside of their benefits. These companies were principally chartered to facilitate“trade.” Later on, they became legal extensions of theirgovernments, a fact that afforded them the right to assert sovereign powers over the native peoples within the colony.
Trading companies gradually became more intrusive in the governance of the colonies to further their economic interests and those of the colonial powers. As the intrusion grew, more demands were made on the African countries. These demands were accompanied by threat of “military” actionto enforce concession to the interests of the trading companies.Eventually, chartered companies, as extensions of the government, were an authoritative force in territories, playing an imperative role in territorial annexations and profiting from raw materials and valuable minerals.
To fulfill the interests of the industrial capitalist structure built upon the backs of African people and lands, colonial powers violently took over nations. They exploited resource-rich African lands for their own economic benefit and global economic interests, both directly and via chartered companies.Earlier colonialists arrived on African shores, including the Red Sea, to expand their empires by exploiting local labor to extract valuable natural resources and raw materials, building critical infrastructure like railroads in the process to facilitate the import and export of these dispossessed goods.
Digital capitalism: Today’s colonialists are digital. They build communication infrastructures such as social media platforms and network connectivity for the express purpose of “harvesting” data, churning a profit. They store these data as raw materials for digital use. As Antony Anghie revealed the digital colonialism is the decentralized “extraction and control” of data from citizens with or without their explicit consent through communication networks developed and owned by Western tech companies. As professors Hendricks and et al suggest, this structure has its own operators.
Digital colonial is men forces economic and cultural domination while “imposing” privatized forms of governance. To this effect, major corporations design digital technology to ensure their own dominance in the “tech ecosystem.” This allows them to accumulate profits from revenues derived from rent, in the form of intellectual property or access to infrastructure and surveillance in the form of digital data. It also empowers them to exercise “control” over the flow of information such asthe distribution of news services, social activities like social networking and cultural exchange and a plethora of other political activities.
Conclusion: Currently Africa, including Ethiopia, are severely affected by digital colonialism. This is essentially a misuse of technological capacities for the exploitation of the rich natural resources the continent is endowed with. In the previous centuries, Africa had been subdued by mere brutal colonialist forces. Currently, the abusive power of Western tech is more exploitative and offensive than the previous one. The greatest irony, however, is that African countries, including Ethiopia, acquire the means of protection and defense from the tech “offenders” themselves. They are not allowed to develop or imitate techs that may replace or substitute technical expertise of the Western and other emerging powers. Both the superpowers and emerging ones watch Africa through the evil eyes of a colonial master. Selective South-South cooperation for mutual development is now a necessity.
Thank you.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD JANUARY 15/2021
