Starting Point
- The data economy has great potential for emerging economies to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
- Leveraging this potential depends on how the framing of data-sharing policies occurs.
- The digitisation (at a different pace) of two sectors critical for the Senegalese economy, agriculture and financial services, is a data-sharing enabler that allows for the evaluation of existing policies.
Research Questions
Agriculture sector
- What is the role of public and private actors in the digitisation of the agriculture sector?
- What role do digital technology and agriculture data play for better decision making to mitigate and adapt to climate change, while preserving food security?
- What role do data access and data sharing play in the digitisation process of the agriculture sector and the overcoming of the digital divide?
Financial services sector
- What are the existing market realities and regulatory frameworks regarding data sharing between mobile communication devices, access to financial data in retail payments and access of the government to financial data?
- What is the role of digital financial inclusion?
- What role does data sharing play for accelerating the attainment of SDGs?
Methodology
Multi-stakeholder two-day workshop on 16/17 March 2022
Participants were invited to reflect on three central realities:
- Current and envisioned market realities and business models
- Technological and regulatory hurdles
- Stakeholders’ envisioned role of the lawmaker for any necessary legislative action
The sessions aimed at identifying specific issues in each sector:
Agriculture
- Role of public and private actors in digitisation
- Climate change and food security
- Digital divide
Financial services
- Innovation of the sector
- Financial inclusion
- Accelerating growth and development of Senegal’s economy
Preliminary Findings
Agriculture sector
- Despite the lack of a coherently coordinated legal framework for data sharing, a market functional approach already allows for data-sharing practices that assist in attaining SDGs.
- The legal framework on personal data seems to bring additional hurdles to developing data-driven business models.
Financial services sector
- Even if some regulatory aspects are still lacking, innovative services develop faster than the legal framework.
- The case of mobile money shows that dynamic competition and innovation based on data sharing works and improves financial inclusion levels.
Overarching
- The division between the SDGs and their distinct preferentiation in political agenda setting is no longer valid. Data sharing interfaces between agriculture and financial services show that a more cross-cutting and horizontal approach seems necessary to achieve and accelerate the attainment of SDGs
