In collaboration with scholars from Senegal, India and Brazil, the Institute researches how the concept of data governance can be used in emerging economies to better achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
In the year 2021, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the Institute discerned an imperative need for expanded legal scholarship concerning the evolving law on the digital sector in emerging economies. Also recognizing the great potential of digital technology for providing effective responses to major challenges of humankind, such as climate change, the Institute built up a research network with partners from universities in Senegal, India and Brazil to conduct a joint research project on data governance in emerging economies to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The project was launched at a critical point when the European Union was adopting an impressive number of regulatory acts for the digital economy, not least with the intention to set a global standard, and ideas on data colonialism were spreading in the literature on global data law. In contrast to those two developments, the project takes the SDGs as the objectives for data legislation in emerging economies and methodologically relies on data governance systems as the best means to bring about tangible benefits in terms of sustainable human, social and economic development.
In 2015, in its study titled “Data Driven Innovation – Big Data for Growth and Well-Being”, the OECD identified data sharing as key for fostering digital innovation in the interest of achieving multiple public interest goals. In the following years, this insight inspired the Institute in its research and policy work regarding the development of the legal framework for the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI). While the focus was first on the legal framework in the EU, in 2021 the Institute shifted its attention to also address the issue of how data policies should be framed in emerging economies. However, the insight of course also holds true as regards other parts of the world. To complement past and ongoing research on intellectual property and competition law in developing and emerging economies, at the beginning of 2021 a new research project was launched on the adequate design of the legal framework for data law in emerging economies.
Full report on this project in the Institute's Activity Report 2021–2023.
Publications
Mor Bakoum, Begoña González Otero, Jörg Hoffmann, Minata Sarr, Data Governance in Emerging Economies to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals – Senegal Country Report Based on the Workshop Shaping Data Sharing Policies in the Agricultural and the Financial Services Sector (Dakar, March 16-17, 2022) (Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper, No. 24-05), 2024, 91 pages, External Link
Arul George Scaria, Vikas Kathuria, Shraddha Kulhari, Vidyalakshmi Subramanian, Data Governance in Emerging Economies to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. India Country Report Based on the Workshop Data Governance for Good Health & Well-Being: India’s Way Forward to Achieving Sustainable Development Goal 3 (Bengaluru, September 8-9, 2022), (Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper No. 24-08) External Link
III.2 Legal development in non-European jurisdictions
