Responding to the call for contributions on the World Summit on the Information Society’s (WSIS) Open Consultation process, this submission calls the forum to ground its global digital governance process in the lived realities of people in the Global South — particularly those at greatest risk of being left behind as emerging technologies reshape economies and societies.
This submission draws on Research ICT Africa’s multi-country 2022 After Access study, which interviewed more than 1000 women and girls in Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, and Uganda to investigate how they experience digital technology access, use, and outcomes. This research reveals how gender inequalities intersect with infrastructure gaps, linguistic exclusion, technology-facilitated violence, and the rapid but uneven uptake of AI-powered tools, and what these mean for the WSIS Action Lines.
Complementing this contribution is RIA’s Africa Just AI research, which examines justice-oriented frameworks for AI governance in Africa, centring equity, democratic accountability, and African development priorities. The contribution is also complemented by the insights from a national multistakeholder engagement held earlier in 2025, which RIA hosted to feed into the WSIS 2025 review process. The initiative was held in partnership with the Global Network Initiative (GNI) and the Global Partners Digital (GPD). We continue to be part of the broader WSIS multistakeholder initiatives from this project.
Together, these research and multistakeholder policy engagements position RIA to contribute both empirical evidence and normative frameworks to WSIS discussions at the intersection of connectivity, digital inclusion, and the governance of emerging technologies.
