Global majority

The way I see it, the digital divide refers to this gap between people who have access to digital technologies, such as the internet, electricity, mobile devices that are internet enabled, and those who don't, quite often.

the people who have access to these digital technologies are citizens of the global north, whereas those who don't are usually based in what we call global majority countries, countries whose citizens are based in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

Now, a lot of Policy leaders, especially in Africa, often refer to this concept of the digital divide as a problem that needs to be addressed.

But that concept is really not explained in the African Union frameworks and instruments.

And they describe that within the context of data.

So the framework argues that there are data deserts in many African countries which reflect the digital divide because many people lack access to the services and systems used to generate the data needed to train algorithms or analyze for decision making.

So, while we don't have an exact definition of the digital divide, at the very least, we know that it's a reference point for this gap between what's available in the global North and the limited access we have in global majority of global South countries.

Thanks, Fola, that's super clear.

Territorially, the global South has been used rather broadly as an alternative term to the so-called Third World, or to define the non-Western world, literally, you know, those South of the colonial centers of power.

A more politicized understanding of the term, I think, offers a more complete picture, and it's one that encapsulates spaces and peoples that have had shared experiences of colonialism and subjugation of both historic and contemporary capitalist globalization and so I think that's important and I think it's also important to recognize that people see it's the term global majority to highlight the fact that this is indeed the experience of the large majority of the people in the world and there's this ongoing you know debate about whether or not we should be using global south or global majority and That's a longer conversation and perhaps not for this particular discussion.

But I think it's important also to recognize that the global South is certainly not a hegemon.

And the way that we're understanding it and talking about it in this discussion is more aligned, I think, with the political definition of global South.

Today, it's a very reactionary state allied with the worst reactionary fascist states in the world and itself having a fascist movement to run it.

So it's important to keep in mind that we're not talking about some kind of well-defined unified bloc.

But it's also a useful term, in my view, to look at, as you mentioned, the global majority and the majority of the world has indeed been colonized.

So in my view, there is a utility in using this term, even if we have to be careful of some of these caveats and nuances that govern it.