Tag: China Digital

Beyond Hardware: How AI and Chinese Innovators are Reshaping Digital Accessibility

~ Weiyi Zhang ~ Leave a comment

Accessibility is a fundamental concept, ensuring that no one is excluded from participating in society on the basis of a disability. Historically, our efforts focused on removing physical impediments, such as architectural barriers or the need for specialised assistive hardware. However, the rapid advancement of the digital age has introduced complex new information barriers. The challenge is clear: how can accessibility development keep up with this trend? More importantly, can the rise of powerful AI technology be leveraged to bridge the information divide rather than widen it? This post explores these questions by examining the practices of leading Chinese technology firms like OPPO, Vivo, Xiaomi, and HONOR.

The Era of Multimodal Interaction

The mobile phone remains a key portable terminal in our daily lives, and there is a consensus among Chinese tech firms that multimodal interaction is the next frontier. This technology vastly enriches the ways users see, hear, and touch, allowing information to be flexibly translated across different sensory channels to bridge the information divide. Vivo, for instance, believes that intelligent devices act as “external organs” for users. Their feature, “Vivo 看见” (Vivo See), assists users with visual impairments by describing real-world scenes in detail. It can enable a user to confidently visit a flower shop to buy red carnations or, as shown in recent demos, identify exactly how much of a birthday cake has been eaten and where it has been cut.

(Source: Vivo看见)

(Sentences on the picture: “How much of the cake was cut off?” “There is a triangular area at the bottom right corner of the cake that has been cut off, while the rest of the cake is intact.” )

Innovating for Situational and Environmental Barriers

(Source: Google Images)

These innovations extend beyond permanent disabilities to address situational barriers encountered by diverse users. For example, a solitary woman can protect her privacy by using an AI function to reply to calls with a man’s voice, instructing a delivery to “put the takeout outside the door”. Furthermore, new device forms like foldable phones are creating new possibilities: a half-folded device can use the outer screen as a “translator” for displaying information, while the inner screen communicates with the user via lip-reading and gesture recognition. Moreover, by leveraging these multimodal capabilities, more natural multisensory information transfer is being achieved through devices like bone conduction headphones, precise haptic feedback (such as watch vibrations), and holographic projection, enhancing the user experience across various accessibility needs. In the home environment, Xiaomi has established an integrated product series centred on the AI robot “Xiao Ai.” This allows users to interact with furniture and appliances via voice or gesture, providing real-time subtitles for those who cannot hear and scene descriptions for those who cannot see, effectively extending accessibility across the entire house.

(Source: Google Images)

Embedding Inclusion into Business Strategy

The vision of accessible products cannot be realised without embedding it into business strategies. Chinese firms are recognising that inclusion is a driver of value, not just a cost centre. OPPO, for example, is developing a “千人千屏” (A Unique Display for Every User) experience. By leveraging AI to tailor digital interfaces to the needs of every individual, they are aligning with the principle of inclusive design, which is meeting the diverse needs of a wider range of users to increase utility and market appeal. Similarly, HONOR has established a dedicated accessibility R&D group to coordinate cross-departmental efforts and actively invites users to participate in design. Notably, they set up accessibility experience booths at product release conferences to enhance employee awareness of these achievements.

The Ecosystem and the Reality Check

Advancing accessibility requires an industry-wide effort. Vivo has taken significant steps by integrating industry and academia, collaborating with organisations like the China Disabled Persons’ Federation (CDPF), China Association of the Blind (CAB), and universities to gain a deep understanding of users’ needs. In 2024, they freely opened their AI capabilities to developers serving users with disabilities, with daily average calls reaching 2 million, covering many non-Vivo terminal enterprises.

The Other Side of the Coin

However, while these developments are impressive, we must be cautious and look beyond the technological optimism. Are these solutions truly accessible to everyone? Many of these advanced multimodal features rely on the powerful processing capabilities of high-end flagship devices, potentially excluding users in low-resource settings who rely on budget devices. Furthermore, features that constantly analyse the environment via cameras, while helpful for navigation, raise significant questions about data privacy. There is also the risk of AI hallucinations. In a casual setting, a wrong description of a cake is fine. But in a navigational or medical context, an AI hallucination could be dangerous.

Conclusion

The essence of product accessibility lies in empowering people and enabling everyone to equally enjoy the life brought by technology. Chinese tech firms are actively tackling these challenges by focusing on AI-powered terminal innovation, embedding inclusive design into commercial strategy, and building open ecosystems. These efforts promise to promote digital equality, but the journey is far from over. As we celebrate these advancements, we must remain vigilant about the structural challenges of cost and privacy to ensure technology truly bridges the divide.

Acknowledgements

The cases presented in this blog are mainly derived from the roundtable discussion of the 7th Technology Accessibility Development Conference (2025TADC), Beijing, China.

Further reading

  1. DESA (2013) Accessibility and Development: Mainstreaming disability in the post-2015 development agenda. New York: UN-Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
  2. Dritsas, E. et al. (2025) ‘Multimodal Interaction, Interfaces, and Communication: A Survey’, Multimodal Technologies and Interaction, 9(1), p. 6. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/mti9010006.
  3. Gilbert, R.M. (2019) Inclusive Design for a Digital World: Designing with Accessibility in Mind. Apress.
  4. Jaeger, P.T. (2022) Disability and the Internet: Confronting a Digital Divide. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers (Disability in Society). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781626371910.
  5. Makuwira, J. (2022) ‘Disability-inclusive development’, in The Routledge Handbook of Global Development. Routledge.
  6. Persson, H. et al. (2015) ‘Universal design, inclusive design, accessible design, design for all: different concepts—one goal? On the concept of accessibility—historical, methodological and philosophical aspects’, Universal Access in the Information Society, 14(4), pp. 505–526. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-014-0358-z.
  7. Raja, D.S. (2016) Bridging the Disability Divide through Digital Technologies. Background Paper for the 2016 World Development Report: Digital Dividends. World Bank.

China’s digital expansion in the Global South: Systematic literature review and future research agenda

~ Richard Heeks ~ 1 Comment

What are the implications for the global South of China’s emergence as a digital superpower?

A recently-published literature review from myself and colleagues at the University of Manchester identifies seven key issues that have so far emerged:

  • Chronology: a steady progression of Chinese investment in the global South up the digital stack (see Figure 1) since the 1990s.
  • Synergies and Tensions: an external image of “Team China” with strong state financial and political support for overseas growth of Chinese tech firms but, underneath, some strains between state and firms, and competition between the firms themselves.
  • State Strategy that espouses mutual “win-win” between China and global South countries in public, but which has been single-minded in delivering benefits for China from its external digital strategy.  Perhaps not so different from the approach of some Western nations.
  • Design and Implementation: just a few nuggets suggesting Chinese digital developers may undertake “South-South” knowledge transfer e.g. from experiences in Chinese rural markets, but also that practice may differ quite a lot from the Principles for Digital Development.
  • Impact: a delivery of economic and political benefits for China; a likely delivery of economic and political benefits for recipient countries in the South but with few well-researched examples; and a whole set of “concerns”.  Talked up by Sinophobic researchers and talked down by Sinophilic researchers, the concerns include data security and sovereignty; control over digital infrastructure; dependency and vulnerability to Chinese state leverage; digitally-enabled inequalities both between and within countries; and environmental impact.
  • “Digital Authoritarianism”: rhetoric in US-origin literature about China exporting digital authoritarianism seems to run well ahead of evidence, to ignore the many Western nations exporting surveillance systems to the global South, and to ignore that demand-pull from the global South dominates supply-push.  But one should not swing too far the other way: China is now the South’s primary surveillance supplier, and the relationship between Chinese firms and Chinese state is not an exact mirror of Western equivalents.
  • Global Digital Governance: a divergence of worldviews between the West and China on internet governance, digital standards, and data governance, with each side actively recruiting global South countries to their cause.

Figure 1: The Chinese technology stack

Although this research has been helpful, the rather small corpus of work so far published leaves not just a general knowledge gap around China’s digital expansion but also a specific six-part future research agenda:

  1. More Southern Voices: more Southern-based researchers, more South-focused empirics, and more evidence from Southern policy-makers, implementers, local tech firms, consumers, etc.
  2. Moving Up the Tech Stack: given the main research focus to date has been on telecom infrastructure there now needs to be more investigation of application platforms and services including e-commerce, smart cities, artificial intelligence, ICT4D projects, etc.
  3. Beyond “Team China”: moving beyond specu­lation to understand the actual coherence, collabora­tion, competition, and conflict between different Chinese state agencies, between Chinese state agencies and tech firms, between Chinese tech firms, and between Chinese ICT and non-ICT businesses.
  4. Between Sinophobia and Sinophilia: steering between the stereotypically-extreme views of some US and Chinese literature, and simultaneously steering between Sino-exceptionalism (treating China as a unique case) and Sino-identicaism (seeing China as just replicating patterns of Western (US particularly) digital imperialism).
  5. Local Agency: pushing past the neocolonialism of much current literature that focuses on Chinese and Western actors and sees those in global South as mere pawns in a new Great Game; to ask – for example – what room for manoeuvre global South actors have in procurement, in digital policy and in international forums; and to ask what digital alignment strategies they can best adopt.
  6. Local Development Impact: assessing the true cost-benefit of Chinese telecom infrastructure, data centres, platforms, etc., and the macro-level impact on local polities, debt, labour markets, etc.

Content in this post summarises the paper, “China’s digital expansion in the Global South: Systematic literature review and future research agenda”, published in the journal, The Information Society.

Get the full picture by reading the paper at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01972243.2024.2315875

Can digital platforms help change social values in rural China?

~ Qingna Zhou ~ Leave a comment

Digital platforms have been extensively used in supporting rural development in the global south. There is a recognition that digital platforms create economic value for businesses in rural areas – however, can they be leveraged to help change social values in areas such as rural China?

Social challenges in rural China

Rurality has the effect of exacerbating the related conditions that increase vulnerability and limit opportunities to alleviate poverty [1][2]. Distance from markets and limited resources create disadvantages for rural populations whilst relative isolation and dispersed populations may also allow neglect of the problems caused by social and economic distance. Geography can render the vulnerable in rural regions less visible and harder to reach with knowledge, networks and other resources. Many social problems thus hinder rural development. In rural China, persistent and entrenched social problems have been identified e.g., social stigma, rural-to-urban migration, left-behind children, etc. Development of new social values in rural areas is therefore equally important as development of economic value to create positive change.

The Covid-19 pandemic gave a significant boost to digitalisation, including livestreaming e-commerce in China [3]. It has transformed the way e-commerce is undertaken in China and become an essential marketing channel for most vendors on platforms such as Taobao, even in the countryside. However, traditional social norms in some rural communities have restricted its potential. For example, in some regions, it is seen as improper for a woman to present too much of herself to the public, meaning livestreaming e-commerce is regarded as an improper practice for some female e-vendors within their local community. Rural female live-streamers have therefore faced community prejudices against their identity and their profession [4].

How can we leverage digital platforms to mitigate rural social problems?

From this, it can be seen that both economic and social development are required to address the current problems in rural China.  But can digital platforms themselves help to deliver both economic and social value?

Digital platforms possess capabilities to deploy resources for transformation [5]. Four different digital platform capabilities have been identified that are afforded by the digital and social infrastructures within which platforms are embedded:

  • Disembedding: helping disconnect from previous thinking modes [6].
  • Disintermediation: reducing or eliminating intermediaries from the value chain [7].
  • Collaboration: enabling engagement in a broader entity within the ecosystem
  • Knowledge spillovers: allowing knowledge to be shared across forms and functions within and outside boundaries.

These capabilities combine both economic and social aspects: for example, while disintermediation can increase economic efficiency, disembedding can help disrupt conservative institutional values that constrain gender equality.

There is already some empirical evidence that these capabilities can serve as the basis for generating both economic and social value in marginalised communities [5].  This blogpost would therefore like to advocate for further research to investigate both forms of value co-creation based on digital platform capabilities, focusing on rural areas such as rural China.

[1] Alvarez, S. A., & Barney, J. B. (2014). Entrepreneurial opportunities and poverty alleviation. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 38(1), 159-184.

[2] Anderson, A. R., & Obeng, B. A. (2017). Enterprise as socially situated in a rural poor fishing community. Journal of Rural Studies, 49, 23-31.

[3] Guan, Z., Hou, F., Li, B., Phang, C. W., & Chong, A. Y. L. (2022). What influences the purchase of virtual gifts in live streaming in China? A cultural context‐sensitive model. Information Systems Journal, 32(3), 653-689.

[4] Tang, N., Tao, L., Wen, B., & Lu, Z. (2022). Dare to Dream, Dare to Livestream: How E-commerce livereaming empowers Chinese rural women. 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

[5] Ahuja, S., Chan, Y. E., & Krishnamurthy, R. (2023). Responsible innovation with digital platforms: Cases in India and Canada. Information Systems Journal, 33(1), 76-129.

[6] Sandeep, M., & Ravishankar, M. (2015). Social innovations in outsourcing: An empirical investigation of impact sourcing companies in India. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 24(4), 270-288.

[7] Wang, C. C., Miao, J. T., Phelps, N. A., & Zhang, J. (2021). E-commerce and the transformation of the rural: The Taobao village phenomenon in Zhejiang Province, China. Journal of Rural Studies, 81, 159-169.

Lessons for Other Countries from China’s Crackdown on Big Tech

~ Richard Heeks ~ Leave a comment

What can low- and middle-income countries learn from China’s recent approach to regulation of big tech?

What Happened?

China’s digital economy can be categorised into three phases[1]: a more open phase starting in the 20th century that encouraged foreign investment and collaboration; a focus on state support to build national and then global digital champions; and most-recently some degree of state backlash against the monsters it had helped create.

The straw that broke the camel’s back and made the third phase explicit was a speech by Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, on 24th Oct 2020 critical of recent attempts at financial regulation by agencies of the Chinese state.  However, plans for tighter regulation of big tech in China had been underway since 2018, and actions on the wider digital economy such as fintech lenders had begun even earlier.[2]  Call it “crackdown” or “rectification”, the Chinese state introduced during 2020 and, especially, 2021 a series of measures that ran alongside a new narrative asserting that action was required in the digital economy in order to “limit the disorderly expansion of capital” and to deliver “common prosperity”.[3]

There were new financial rules, ensuring large fintech firms had much greater funds to cover the loans they were making, and banning edtech firms from accepting foreign investment and, effectively, preventing them from making a profit.  Anti-monopoly guidelines included new legal rules on assets intended to force break-ups and sell-offs, and to open up e-commerce marketplaces for smaller enterprises.

Tighter data rules arose with both the Data Security Law and Personal Information Protection Law coming into effect during 2021 and being used to provide greater state oversight over localisation, export and privacy of data held by big tech. As part of this, more than 100 firms were investigated for claimed illegal collection of data.

Redistributive regulations encouraged or forced redistribution of big tech profits to workers or to other pro-equality projects.  Other actions included restrictions on the number of hours per week minors could spend gaming, bans on cryptocurrency, and tax investigation of online influencers.

What was the Impact?

Overt effects noted so far of the increased regulation have been manifold[4].

Direct impacts have included some delinking from foreign investment with, for example, the suspension of Ant Group’s and ByteDance’s US IPOs.  There has been a substantial loss in market value of China’s big tech firms – hundreds of billions of US dollars-worth of share price losses; particularly hitting foreign investors which, in turn, has led to a significant decrease in foreign investment in China’s digital economy. More specific direct impacts include Didi being blocked from adding new users and having its app removed from app stores; Meituan being made to raise wages and provide insurance for its workers, and Ant Group and others having to share data with public agencies.

Regulatory pressures have encouraged the break-up of big tech firms or their withdrawal from certain investments, the most recent being Alibaba’s March 2023 announcement of its separation into six different business units. While adhering to anti-monopoly rules and signalling a lack of intent to empire-build, these partitions have also hampered firms given “that a crucial aspect of the business model adopted by these tech giants is building an integrated ecosystem involving multiple complementary industries”[5]. Local investment in the digital economy has been reduced, with estimates of more than 200,000 job losses in internet companies in the nine months from mid-2021 to spring 2022, alongside less concrete or quantifiable outcomes in relation to reduced levels of digital innovation.

Other impacts were more notable for their symbolism: the heads of tech firms including Alibaba, Pinduoduo, ByteDance, Meituan and Didi stepping down and/or disappearing from public sight; huge, billion-dollar donations by tech firms to “common prosperity” funds and other philanthropic endeavours; fines costing hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars for many tech firms including Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Meituan, ByteDance and Didi for abuse of monopoly or breach of data regulations.

What’s so far unclear is whether the measures taken against big tech have reduced any of the four big inequalities in China: high concentration ratios and monopolies in key digital markets; income/wealth inequalities between rich and poor; geographical inequalities between regions and between urban and rural; distributive inequalities between capital and labour.  Recent papers[6] discuss the relation of digital to common prosperity but so far only show the potential for digitally-enabled reduction in geographical inequalities on the basis of historical data.

Given that a number of the listed impacts have not been in the national interest, some roll-back occurred from 2022 onwards[7]. Early in 2022 there were some more positive statements from government officials about the value of the platform economy, then more explicit support in May for tech firms seeking domestic and overseas listings. By 2023, Didi was allowed to register new users, new licences for gaming firms were being issued, Jack Ma reappeared in mainland China, and officials were explicitly reassuring tech firms about some easing of the earlier regulatory tightening; albeit making clear there would be no return to the pre-2020 situation.

Why did it Happen?

For sure, there may have been economic concerns at the highest levels of the Communist Party about financial instability and economic inequality, but the core rationale for the measures comes down to one word: control.

This came particularly with the run-up to the 20th Party Congress in 2022 that gave Xi Jinping an unprecedented third term, but more generally as part of Xi Jinping’s steady reversal since 2012 of the relatively decentralised and distributed model of power that had existed since the time of Deng Xiaoping[8].  Three different domains of centralisation of control can be identified[9].

Social control: seeking to maintain the legitimacy of the Party by giving at least the appearance, during a period of Covid disruption and slowing growth, of addressing social issues like inequality, digital exclusion, platform lock-in of consumers and small sellers, resentment of middle-class parents paying edtech platforms for education the state did not provide, and social ills like gaming addiction.  Alongside this, alternative, critical narratives were silenced with, for example, initial action against Jack Ma and Ant Group making clear that public dissent against Party policies would not be tolerated.

Economic control: growth of the private sector and the shrinking role of state-owned or -affiliated enterprises within the overall economy has left the state with fewer direct levers of economic control.  The state has thus taken direct stakes in a number of big tech firms and through this and other means, placed party members onto company boards in order to have a measure of direct control.  The financial and other measures have sought to stabilise and control markets.  Alongside this, the measures have sought to reduce the extent of foreign economic control over Chinese big tech, even where there are foreign investors.  They have also sought to help shift resources both within and between tech firms from digital activities with lower national priority (such as e-commerce and social media) to those with higher national priority (such as AI, chip production and quantum computing).

Political control: growth, profile and political connections of big tech leaders and firms in China had made them into new loci of power; something seen as a directly challenge to the Party.  In general, all of the regulatory actions were an assertion of state control over big tech, especially as data – named as a factor of production since April 2020 and a growing source of power – is now being harvested and analysed in huge quantities within these firms.  In parallel, there were even-more covert objectives with action against Ant Group seeking to deny windfall profits that political rivals of Xi Jinping would have gained had the company been listed overseas.  Punitive actions against Didi after it proceeded with an overseas IPO against state wishes also sent a symbolic message about who was in charge.

What are the Lessons?

China is a global digital superpower with unique features including the power and capacity of the state, the size of the national digital economy, and the size and reach of its digital firms.  So the idea that global South governments might replicate what China has done does not make sense.

However, a few lessons can be drawn.

1. Politics Trumps Economics in Policy-Making.  China’s recent policies have damaged its digital multinationals and its digital economy.  But digital policy has been made – as policy often is – for political much more than economic reasons.  Digital policy advice and digital policy research needs to recognise the primacy of politics.

2. Policy Responsiveness is Good; Policy Uncertainty is Bad.  Likely recognising that it had gone too far, the Chinese state reversed direction a bit from 2022.  Changing policy direction in response to the negative impacts of policy is highly recommended.  What is not recommended is the uncertainty created by what can be perceived as two significant changes in direction in three years including a partial backtrack.  That uncertainty is heightened when policy-making is highly-centralised and without transparency.

3. Policy Structures Matter.  Digital policy advice and analysis focuses a lot on the content of policy but much less on policy structures.  China’s experience shows how structures matter[10].  It is not a specific feature of recent policy but China’s digital policy is fragmented across a large number of agencies. This has been partly organic as digital constantly raises new issues that different traditional agencies may try to deal with but which also encourage formation of new agencies.  It has also been partly deliberate to avoid creating a single state agency powerbase for digital policy that could challenge central authority.  But this complicates policy-making and raises the likelihood of policy contradictions that harm the digital economy with, for instance, mixed messages having been given by different agencies during the clampdown.  Likewise, heavy centralisation of policy can give a strong sense of direction if chosen correctly, but it may also amplify policy errors and lead to policy inertia if all decisions have to run through a central point.  Whatever the rights and wrongs, it means that policy needs to be built on appropriate structures as much as appropriate content.

4. Targeted Regulation Works Better than Blanket Regulation.  China’s recent policy initiatives have been somewhat targeted[11].  For example, while cracking down on e-commerce or data issues within the BAT big three of Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, there has been “little regulatory interference” and, indeed, state support for these companies’ work on the “deep tech” priorities of the state such as AI and high-end chip production.  That differentiated approach to digital policy has helped more than an indiscriminate crackdown would have.

[1] To, Y. (2023) Friends and foes: rethinking the party and Chinese big tech. New Political Economy, 28(2), 299-314

[2] Creemers, R. (2023) The Great Rectification: A New Paradigm for China’s Online Platform Economy. Available at SSRN

[3] Economist (2021) China’s government is cracking down on fintech. What does it want?, Economist, 13 Mar; Economist (2021) China’s rulers want more control of big tech, Economist, 8 Apr; Economist (2021) Didi’s removal from China’s app stores marks a growing crackdown, Economist, 5 Jul; Poswal, V. (2022) Xi Jinping’s Crackdown on Big Tech-Companies. International Journal of Multidisciplinary Educational Research, 11(5), 67-70; Wu, Y. (2022) Understanding China’s Digital Economy: Policies, Opportunities, and Challenges, China Briefing, 11 Aug; Collier, A. (2022) China’s Technology War: Why Beijing Took Down Its Tech Giants. Springer Nature; Creemers (2023)

[4] Economist (2021, 8 Apr); Economist (2021, 5 Jul); Pathak, S. (2021) China’s Tech Crackdown: Why Now. Science, Technology and Security Forum, Manipal University, Karnataka; Poswal (2022); Sun, X. (2022) Decoding China’s” Common Prosperity” Drive, LSE Ideas, April; Collier (2022); Interesse, G. (2023) Is China’s ‘Tech Crackdown’ Over? Our 2023 Regulatory Outlook for the Sector, China Briefing, 22 Feb; Economist (2023) Alibaba breaks itself up in six, Economist, 30 Mar

[5] Sun (2022)

[6] E.g. Jiechang, X., & Cheng, L. (2022) Empowerment of Common Prosperity through Digital Economy: Pathways and Policy Design. China Economic Transition, 5(1), 41-61; Zhao, T., Jiao, F., & Wang, Z. (2023) Digital economy, entrepreneurial activity, and common prosperity: Evidence from China. Journal of Information Economics, 1(1), 59-71

[7] To (2023); Interesse (2023)

[8] Sun (2022)

[9] Economist (2021, 8 Apr); Economist (2021) What tech does China want?, Economist, 9 Aug; Pathak (2021); Economist (2021) China’s communist authorities are tightening their grip on the private sector, Economist, 20 Nov; Poswal (2022); Sun (2022); To (2023)

[10] Sun (2022)

[11] To (2023)

Latest Digital Development Outputs (China, Data, Economy/Platforms, Inclusion, Water, Rights, Sustainability) from CDD, Manchester

~ Richard Heeks ~ Leave a comment

Recent outputs – on China Digital; Data-for-Development; Digital Economy / Platforms; Digital Inclusion; Digital Water; Rights; and Sustainability – from Centre for Digital Development researchers, University of Manchester:

CHINA DIGITAL

“China’s digital expansion in the global South” presents recordings of nine presentations at a CDD international workshop that discusses the implications for the global South of China’s emergence as a digital superpower.

“Understanding the evolution of China’s standardization policy system” (open access) by You-hong Yang, Ping Gao & Haimei Zhou, investigates the evolution of China’s technology standardization policy system in the period from 1978 to 2021.  

DATA-FOR-DEVELOPMENT

A DC State of Mind? A Review of the World Development Report 2021: Data for Better Lives by Hellen Mukiri-Smith, Laura Mann & Shamel Azmeh, reviews the World Development Report (2021) on data governance.

DIGITAL ECONOMY / PLATFORMS

“Examining ecosystems and infrastructure perspectives of platforms: the case of small tourism service providers in Indonesia and Rwanda” (open access version available) by Christopher Foster & Caitlin Bentley, analyses tourism platforms from the perspective of small and marginal service providers. It is useful to move away from ideas of platform leaders organising ecosystems from the top-down, towards more emergent behaviours of service providers in multi-platform environments.

Automation and industrialisation through global value chains: North Africa in the German automotive wiring harness industry by Shamel Azmeh, Huong Nguyen & Marlene Kuhn, examines the implications of automation on the global map of production and the position of developing countries in global value chains. Through the case of the German automotive wiring harness industry, we examine the implications of ongoing automation processes on production in North Africa.

“Digital public goods platforms for development: the challenge of scaling” (open access) by Brian Nicholson, Petter Nielsen, Sundeep Sahay & Johan Saebo.  We articulate the notion of digital global public goods and examine the development of DHIS2, a global health platform inspired by public goods, focusing on the paradoxes that arise in the scaling process. A presentation of the paper to the Pankhurst Institute, University of Manchester is available on YouTube.

DIGITAL INCLUSION

“Digital inequality beyond the digital divide: conceptualizing adverse digital incorporation in the global South” (open access) by Richard Heeks, presents a new model to understand how inclusion in – rather than exclusion from – digital systems leads to inequality.

“Revisiting digital inclusion: a survey of theory, measurement and recent research” (open access) by Matthew Sharp, sets out a framework of core components of digital inclusion, surveys current measures of digital inclusion, and makes suggestions for how future research could be more rigorous and useful.

DIGITAL WATER

“Water ATMs and access to water: digitalisation of off-grid water infrastructure in peri-urban Ghana” (open access) by Godfred Amankwaa, Richard Heeks & Alison L. Browne, finds water ATMs to be incremental infrastructures delivering relatively limited and operational-level value, but also producing new and contested socio-material realities.

RIGHTS AND DIGITAL

“RaFoLa: A Rationale-Annotated Corpus for Detecting Indicators of Forced Labour” (open access) by Erick Mendez Guzman, Viktor Schlegel & Riza Batista-Navarro, describes a dataset of news articles categorised according to forced labour indicators. The articles were annotated with rationales, i.e. human explanations for placing them under specific categories, to support the development of explainable AI systems.

“Hustling day in Silicon Savannah: datafication and digital rights in East Africa” (open access) by Gianluca Iazzolino, Michael Kimani & Maddo, is a cartoon on the winners and losers in Kenya’s booming tech scene. It translates, for a non-academic audience, the authors’ research on how digital technologies are reshaping the informal economy in the global South.

SUSTAINABILITY AND DIGITAL

“Exploring financing for green-tech SMEs in East Africa: current trends and risk appetite” (open access) by Aarti Krishnan, reviews the financing of green-tech SMEs in East Africa including different financing at different enterprise lifecycle stages, in different sectors, and across different countries.

“Applications of Industry 4.0 digital technologies towards a construction circular economy: gap analysis and conceptual framework” by Faris Elghaish, Sandra T. Matarneh, David John Edwards, Farzad Pour Rahimian, Hatem El-Gohary & Obuks Ejohwomu, investigates the interrelationships between emerging digital technologies and the circular economy, concluding with the development of a conceptual digital ecosystem to integrate IoT, blockchain and AI.