Since the turn of the century, there has been no shortage of optimism about the role that digital technologies might play in revolutionising solutions to our world’s most pressing challenges. More recently, UN Secretary-General António Guterres described digital technologies as “a crucial ally in our efforts to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and tackle climate change”.
However, the various harms inherent in digital developmental interventions have received less attention. More specifically, the involvement of numerous and diverse stakeholders sets the stage for what has been termed “organised irresponsibility” — a tendency for powerful actors to downplay potential harms and shift the burden of managing them onto less powerful actors. In contexts without robust regulatory guardrails, those who were meant to be the beneficiaries of developmental initiatives often end up bearing the brunt of the associated risks.
Research ICT Africa, in partnership with Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law (CIPIT) and Local Development Research Institute (LDRI) has created a framework to guide critical analyses of the threats and opportunities inherent in digital developmental interventions. The framework is currently being applied to the topical issue of digital IDs, where the link between risk and development is particularly under-theorised. However, we hope that the framework will be applied more broadly to our collectively diverse portfolio of developmental digital interventions going forward.
At the core of our framework is our definition of “risk”. Following Ulrick Beck, we understand risks as the uncertain outcomes — both negative and positive— that arise in the pursuit of something valued (in this case, the achievement of a developmental agenda). Our thesis is simply that using digital services within developmental agendas is accompanied by risk. Risk management, we argue, requires identifying and thwarting threats, as well as identifying opportunities for additional benefits.
Worth highlighting is that our definition of risk incorporates both negative and positive elements. This goes against the mainstream use of “risk” in the digital space and therefore calls for some defense. Within the digital space, the term “risk” is almost always conflated with harm (consider the title, “The Risks of AI in the Workplace,” for example). One consideration in favour of acknowledging positive uncertainties within risk management is that this aligns with our everyday use of the word. It is not uncommon to mean something hopeful when we say things like, “taking a risk,” which can be associated with, “taking a chance or a leap of faith”. Such idioms conveys that risk is not universally a bad thing.
The coexistence of negative and positive elements within risk is also captured in the word’s etymology. Risq in Arabic means wealth or good fortune, and the Latin root word resecum refers to something that cuts, like a reef. It is thought that one of the earliest uses of “risk” emerged in the context of the threats and opportunities awaiting those on exploration voyages.
But there are also good reasons to recognise a positive aspect of “risk”, that go beyond any commitment to semantic purity. For example, within the complex environment where digital interventions play out, negative and positive uncertainties co-exist. One need not look further than India’s digital ID system, Aadhaar, to grasp how the same technology can serve a number of unexpected negative and positive ends. Aadhaar has inadvertently excluded the nation’s most financially vulnerable from vital food rations, but it also facilitated the administration of over 2.2 million Covid-19 vaccines during the pandemic. By choosing to focus only on how things may go wrong, one can overlook additional ways the project could go right. Arguably, having a holistic understanding of how all of the uncertainties relate to one another increases the success of a strategy’s ability to minimise the threats.
Note that committing to consider both negative and positive uncertainties within risk management does not mean that these should be given equal weight. Indeed, investing more resources into identifying, defining, and guarding against threats is likely wiser than investing in producing extra benefits. Another important aspect of our framework is its grounding in human rights theory. We understand something to be harmful to development to the extent that it sets back a human right, and something to be beneficial to the extent that it protects or advances a human right.
There are several reasons why we have chosen to anchor our framework in the language of human rights – human rights have global consensus, even amongst those nations, communities and individuals who hold very different moral and political views; human rights cover a large breadth of concerns, including considerations of social-economic justice and environmental sustainability; and finally, the fact that human rights consider benefits beyond economic terms is consistent with heterodox African theories of development, which RIA and its partners promote with the intent of spotlighting a critical African voice.
Ultimately, the risk framework we have created advances the idea that effective risk management involves identifying potential threats while fostering opportunities for positive outcomes. By understanding risk in this way, we hope to better position ourselves to harness digital technology to promote human rights.
In an era where digital solutions are increasingly seen as panaceas for development challenges, this risk framework serves as a critical tool for ensuring that these solutions truly serve the needs of the communities they aim to benefit, rather than inadvertently perpetuating or exacerbating existing inequalities.
Download the risk framework below.
