Digital colonisation: when your data is no longer yours
Speakers: Cedric Leterme (Gresea-Cetri), Karen Debroey (ACV)
Language: English
Can digital colonisation still be stopped?
A small number of very large digital companies (Amazon, Google, Windows, Facebook, Alibaba …) dominate global digital services and trade. They make huge profits, often without paying local taxes, employing local people, paying decent wages or making productive investments in the countries where they operate.
However, in the meantime they are appropriating the most important raw material of the digital era: (our) data.
Can this digital colonisation still be stopped?
Speakers
Cedric Leterme
Cédric Leterme holds a PhD in Political and Social Sciences and is a research fellow at the Centre tricontinental (CETRI) and the Groupe de recherche pour une stratégie économique alternative (GRESEA).
His fields of study include the political economy of the digital transition. He is the author, among others, of the book L'avenir du travail vu du Sud - Critique de la 4e révolution industrielle (Paris, Syllepse, 2019) and he coordinated the book Impasses numériques (Alternatives Sud vol. 27, n°1, Paris, Syllepse, 2020).
Karen Debroey
Karin Debroey has been a Policy advisor in the International and European Relations Department of Belgian trade union ACV since 2019. Before, she was the ACV program and policy officer for Africa and the Arab world (2002 to 2018).
Debroey’s specific domains of interest and expertise are gender, equality, trade and development cooperation, social protection and decent work.
