Digital Progress, Quiet Dependency

Africa is building. Payments are digitising, public services are moving online, SMEs are selling on social platforms, and a new generation of founders is solving real problems at speed. From the outside, it looks like a clean story of progress.

But a harder question sits underneath the optimism: who owns the underlying rails of this digital future? Not the startups. Not the governments. In many cases, not even the users.

Tech colonialism is not a slogan. It is a structure. It describes a reality where African digital ecosystems increasingly depend on foreign infrastructure, foreign policy choices, foreign platforms, and foreign standards. The dependence is not always malicious, but it is consequential. If your economy runs on systems you do not control, your sovereignty is conditional.

This is not an argument against global technology. It is an argument for clarity: dependency has a cost, and Africa needs to price it properly.

What “Tech Colonialism” Actually Means

The term gets thrown around loosely, so let’s be precise. Tech colonialism shows up when:

Data about African lives is extracted, monetised, and governed elsewhere.
Critical digital services depend on platforms whose incentives are not aligned with local outcomes.
Rules are imported faster than capacity is built, so compliance becomes theatre.
Local innovation exists at the edges, while strategic control sits at the centre, offshore.

This is not about blaming external actors. It is about recognising asymmetric power. If you cannot negotiate from a position of strength, your digital future becomes a subscription plan.

Layer One: Infrastructure Ownership

Most African digital services run on cloud infrastructure owned by a handful of global companies. That gives African teams world-class tooling, yes. It also creates single points of dependency.

When your authentication, storage, compute, monitoring, and analytics depend on one vendor, you inherit their operational decisions. Outages, pricing changes, shifting product roadmaps, and policy enforcement are not just technical events. They become economic events.

A common response is, “We can switch providers.” In theory, yes. In practice, many organisations are locked in through architecture, integrations, and skills. Migration is expensive and disruptive. Lock-in is not always contractual, it is operational.

If Africa wants digital resilience, it must treat infrastructure as strategy, not a procurement choice.

Layer Two: Platform Power and the Informal Digital Economy

Africa’s digital economy is deeply social. Commerce happens on WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook groups, Telegram channels, and informal marketplaces. That convenience drives growth, but it also means an enormous portion of African trade runs on platforms that are not accountable to African regulators or consumer protection norms.

When platform policies change, livelihoods shift overnight. When accounts are flagged, entire micro-businesses collapse. When fraud spreads through social channels, victims rarely get recourse.

Platform dependence without local accountability is not innovation. It is a fragile arrangement masquerading as a market.

Layer Three: Data, Identity, and the New Political Economy

Digital identity is becoming the gateway to modern life. That includes national identity systems, SIM registration, banking KYC, and platform verification. These systems create inclusion when designed well. They create surveillance when designed badly. They create exclusion when implemented carelessly.

The question is not whether Africa should build digital identity systems. It is whether Africa can build them with real safeguards, clear governance, and independent oversight.

A society cannot “reset” biometrics the way it resets passwords. Once biometric databases are compromised, the damage is permanent. The ownership and governance of identity systems is therefore not a technical matter. It is a civil rights matter.

Layer Four: Imported Standards, Local Capacity Gaps

Africa is increasingly adopting global standards and frameworks: GDPR-style privacy thinking, ISO security controls, model AI governance language. This can be beneficial. But there is a trap: importing policy without building capability.

If a regulator mandates compliance but organisations lack skills, tools, and enforcement discipline, you get compliance theatre. Paper policies and weak controls. Certifications without operating maturity.

That is not a small issue. It creates false confidence, and false confidence is how systemic failures occur.

The Hard Truth: Independence Is Not a Mood

Digital sovereignty is not achieved by speeches. It is achieved through:

local talent development
local infrastructure investment
procurement discipline
credible regulation
regional collaboration
and the ability to negotiate as equals

If Africa cannot run its critical systems without external permission, then Africa does not fully own its digital future.

What a Practical African Response Looks Like

The solution is not isolation. It is leverage.

1. Build “strategic redundancy” into national and enterprise architecture

This means hybrid strategies where core services can fail over. It means data portability. It means designing systems that can move when incentives shift.

2. Treat procurement as national security

Governments and large enterprises should stop buying technology solely on price and branding. Procurement must incorporate security posture, transparency, data governance, and exit plans.

3. Invest in local capability, not just local slogans

Local data centres do not solve the problem if the control plane, the expertise, and the governance are still offshore. The focus must be on skills, operational excellence, and credible local vendors.

4. Strengthen regional digital cooperation

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agenda will struggle if cross-border digital trust is weak. Africa needs shared approaches to cyber threat intelligence, data protection interoperability, and digital identity standards.

Ownership Is the New Competitive Advantage

Africa’s digital rise is real. But a digital economy built on invisible dependency will always be vulnerable.

The next chapter is not about building apps. It is about building control, trust, and resilience into the layers underneath the apps. The winners will be those who understand that in the digital world, ownership is not ideology. Ownership is survival.