Getting closer to unlocking data
The Alliance convened a lively discussion titled “Governance for advancing access to data” at the UNESCO International Conference on Digital Platform Governance in Pretoria on 13 February 2026.
It explored the points in the draft Guidelines for Access to Data in which roles are foreseen for Information/Data protection regulators, research bodies, and national statistics agencies.
Commissioner Geereesha Topsy Sonoo, Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information in Africa, told the meeting that the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) will consult on the current draft Guidelines, and consider adopting a version of them later in the year.
Thereafter, she said, state parties will be further engaged on how they can foresee implementation and operationalisation. From the floor, insights proffered in relation to the Guidelines:
- Data is power
- Data’s backbone is mathematics
- Data is part of digital public infrastructure which should be open to all.
Amongst the entities with a role in giving effect to the Guidelines are African research institutions. Addressing this was Dr Tshiamo Motshegwa, executive director of the African Open Science Platform, founded by the South African National Research Foundation.
He elaborated the details of opening up data for research, and opening up research data, as per the Guidelines. For this, he proposed, there should be companion guidelines to specifically apply the ACHPR Guidelines in the research sector.
From the South African National Statistics Commission, deputy director Ashwell Jennecker assessed how the Guidelines could add impetus to the work of the agency in its contribution of unifying State data holdings and services.
Alliance member Zoe Titus of the NMT Media Foundation asked his views on a debate in South Africa where private sector actors, without revealing their data, presented very different population and employment statistics, to those of the Statistics Commission.
In response, he highlighted the importance of meta-data about how specific conclusions were generated, and the value of infusing privately-held data into the work of the Statistics Commission in the spirit of the Guidelines.
From the vantage point of the SA information regulator, Mukelani Dimba foresaw that the Guidelines would help encourage sub-regional co-operation to enforce national jurisdictions when platforms refused legal requests for information and data.
He also flagged how important it is to not just increase the “supply side” of data through the Guidelines, but also to build awareness and capacity on the “demand” side.
Other participants in the discussion were Alliance members, Hlengiwe Dube, Gilbert Sendugwa, and Alfred Bulakali – who highlighted that data governance included the ecosystem of civil society actors.
Bringing a South-South perspective, Maria Paz Canales, of Global Partners Digital, recalled that holdings in both the public and private sectors largely originated from data subjects – individuals and communities. This made the case for public interest data access and sharing.
