The Africa Forum at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, in collaboration with the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), presents a timely discussion examining Africa’s negotiation of digital partnerships amid growing geopolitical rivalry between major players. The panel is based on Negotiating Africa’s Digital Partnerships, a policy research project supported by CIGI and hosted by the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, which studies how African governmental actors negotiate and manage partnerships in the digital sector with new and rising partners. Co-led by Folashadé Soulé, the first phase of this project culminated in a special report that provides valuable insights into the perceptions of African strategies in digital governance, as well as actionable recommendations for African governments and stakeholders negotiating digital partnerships across a range of subjects. The special report will be launched in September.
About the Panelists
Folashadé Soulé is a CIGI senior fellow and senior research associate at the Global Economic Governance Programme, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. She is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Ghana. Her research areas focus on Africa-China relations, the study of agency in Africa’s international relations and the politics of South-South cooperation. She is a principal investigator in Negotiating Africa’s Digital Partnerships, a policy research project that examines Africa’s relations with rising partners in the digital sector. As part of this project, she has led a series of interviews with African senior policy makers, ministers, and private and civic actors that aims to shed light on how African actors build, negotiate and manage strategic partnerships in the digital sector in a context of geopolitical rivalry.
She was a postdoctoral fellow at the London School of Economics and a former Oxford-Princeton Global Leaders Fellow. Her research has been published in several peer-reviewed journals, including African Affairs, International Affairs, Global Governance and Foro Internacional. Folashadé also teaches as a guest lecturer in politics and international relations at the University of Oxford, Department of Politics and International Relations, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies.
As a policy-facing academic, connecting policy and research, she is the initiator of the Africa-China negotiation workshop series, bringing together African negotiators and senior policy makers to exchange and build better negotiation practices when dealing with China. She has also served as a policy analyst and consultant for several institutions.
Jane Munga is a fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She leads the technology stream in the Africa program. Her research focuses on the continent’s digital economy with focus on the enabling environment and collaborations. Her work seeks to provide new knowledge and perspectives that can help catapult Africa’s digital transformation.
Prior to joining Carnegie, Jane was an Advisor for the Government of Kenya, in the Office of the Cabinet Secretary for ICT. In this capacity, she focused on developing digital policies to support the countries e-government initiatives and digital economy. Jane led the development of Kenya’s Digital Economy Blueprint for Africa, published by Smart Africa, and led her to be awarded the Head of State Commendation (HSC). Jane also led the development of Kenya’s National Addressing Policy and participated in design of other national frameworks such as Kenya’s E-Commerce strategy, Spectrum Policy, National ICT Policy.
Jane has also led the design of government digital partnerships such as the World Bank’s Kenya Digital Acceleration Project. As an advisor Jane also applied her expertise to ideate and operationalize initiatives such as Kenya’s White box Innovation lab, Ajira Digital and UN’s Generation Unlimited initiatives. In addition, she represented the government of Kenya in multiple international forums such as Northern Corridor Infrastructure Projects, East African Communications Organization, SMART Africa Alliance, African Telecommunications Union, United Nations and its agencies including International Telecommunications Union.
Jane has been invited to speak and write on issues of Africa’s digital transformation including digital public infrastructure (DPI) Artificial Intelligence, inclusivity and digital collaborations between Africa and the United States, Europe, the Mediterranean and China at various domestic and international fora (GSMA Mobile World Congress, World Bank, Berkeley CEGA, and others). Jane received her PhD in political science and government and master’s degrees in economics and management from the University of Alabama, USA.
Moderator: Ann Fitz-Gerald, Director, Balsillie School of International Affairs
Discussant: Badriyya Yusuf, Digital Policy Hub Fellow, CIGI
