Decolonizing Research — Insights
Source: Decolonizing Research: Data Colonialism and the Path to Sovereign Digital Research Ecosystems, Carlos Vargas, Societās Partnerships S.A., September 2025.
A Global South research system that connects more to the global digital infrastructure often loses control over its own knowledge. This paradox sits at the centre of this report.
Digital infrastructure is the engine of modern science. It powers high-performance computing, shared datasets, real-time sensor networks and global collaboration. For much of the Global South, access to that engine arrives almost entirely through centralised, foreign-owned platforms. This creates a new form of dependency rather than autonomy. The data a nation's researchers generate is stored, processed and monetised under another jurisdiction on external terms. We call this dynamic data colonialism. Building sovereign digital infrastructure offers a deliberate path forward.
Here are seven observations from the report. The full report develops each in depth alongside technological pathways and a framework for action.
Read the full report
The complete analysis, the three comparative case models, the technological pathways, and the four-pillar framework, fully referenced.
Go to ReportRead the companion report, The Sovereign Leap
The firm's briefing on why Global South universities must lead the transition from technological dependence to digital sovereignty.
Go to BriefingDigital infrastructure is never a neutral tool. It carries power with it
Cloud and connectivity are not neutral utilities. Infrastructure is inseparable from surrounding policy, economic and geopolitical structures. The Global South's reliance on centralised, foreign-owned cloud reveals a power asymmetry echoing older patterns of domination.1 Choosing where data lives and who processes it is fundamentally a question of who holds power over the knowledge produced.
A research system must change the questions it asks. "Which platform is cheapest and fastest" must become "what does this platform choice mean for our long-term capacity to govern our own science." Conflating these distinct issues makes dependency invisible.
¹ World Economic Forum, "What is digital sovereignty," 2025; Couldry & Mejias, "Data colonialism: rethinking big data," LSE, 2019.
"Data colonialism" is not a metaphor. It is a described mechanism
Data colonialism is the systematic appropriation of personal, social and communal data by global corporations and states. This capitalist accumulation by dispossession treats social life as a raw resource for the taking, much as historical colonialism treated land and bodies.2 The mechanism runs through ordinary instruments like an End-User License Agreement. This quietly dispossesses data producers of the right to own and control what they generate.
DNA data collected from Indigenous peoples has been critiqued as an extension of colonial extraction. Researchers may advance their careers instead of serving the communities the data came from. Predictive-policing systems have reinforced existing racial biases to mirror historical patterns of segregation.3 Naming the mechanism accurately helps design infrastructure that avoids reproducing it.
² Couldry & Mejias, LSE, 2019; Purdue Critical Data Studies, "Data Colonialism." ³ Decolonizing Research (2025), §"The Geopolitics of Research Infrastructure."
The "free connectivity" offer is the part that most deserves scrutiny
The narrative of tech companies bringing "free" connectivity in the name of progress functions as a modern-day civilizing mission. This masks the underlying purpose of building infrastructures with monopolistic tendencies. It creates deep societal dependency on a handful of platforms.4 Each "free" service deepens a lock-in that makes local alternatives progressively harder to start and sustain.
Developing nations opt for foreign providers for rational reasons. They face imperatives of rapid development, lower prices and technical assistance that local alternatives cannot yet match. An appeal to security or sovereignty alone cannot defeat this economic logic. Building credible alternatives makes a different choice possible.
⁴ Decolonizing Research (2025), §"The Geopolitics of Research Infrastructure"; CSIS, "An Overview of Global Cloud Competition," 2025.
Three routes to the same destination
Three distinct models of building sovereign research infrastructure show how autonomy is achieved. Together they make a single counterintuitive point that sovereignty does not require self-sufficiency.
The first is regional collaboration. The BELLA Programme secured an Indefeasible Right of Use over 40 optical channels on a direct submarine cable between Latin America and Europe. This gave RedCLARA a dedicated research-and-education link that no longer routes through the United States. It was built through partnership with the EU rather than in isolation.5
The second is state-led public infrastructure. India's "India Stack" built a foundational layer of open-source digital public goods like identity, payments and data exchange. This lowered the barrier to entry for domestic innovators and reduced market concentration. The state did not centralise control of the services themselves.6
The third is navigating constraint. African NRENs are often unable to fund their own infrastructure and face commercial ISPs as competitors. They have found inventive routes anyway. Zambia's ZAMREN partnered with power and water utilities to access their existing fibre backbones.7
The most successful models work through strategic interdependence and a phased approach rather than economic self-sufficiency. Sovereignty requires building the infrastructure and governance capacity to engage with the world on equitable terms. Autonomy is available even without abundance. The strategy must be deliberate about ownership, governance and partnerships.
⁵ BELLA / RedCLARA, European Commission International Partnerships. ⁶ India Stack, indiastack.org; ORF, "Digital Public Infrastructure as a Catalyst for Private Sector Innovation." ⁷ UbuntuNet, "ZAMREN demonstrates NREN synergies," 2024.
Sovereignty does not mean self-sufficiency, and that distinction is liberating
Digital sovereignty does not require economic self-sufficiency.8 The self-sufficiency framing is paralysing. A research system that believes sovereignty means building everything itself in head-to-head competition with the US and China will conclude it cannot afford sovereignty. Some countries will never have enough resources to compete head-on with established players.
Sovereignty is the capacity to govern one's digital destiny and engage the world on equitable terms. It is not the capacity to produce everything domestically. It becomes achievable through strategy rather than scale. Each of the three case models secured a sovereign asset through partnership, public-goods design or creative use of existing infrastructure. Institutions should ask how to structure engagement to govern what matters.
⁸ Decolonizing Research (2025), §"Pathways to Sovereignty."
The technology to decentralise already exists; the binding constraint is governance
A genuine technological pathway exists away from the centralised model. Decentralised data architectures distribute storage and processing across nodes. This lets each domain manage its own data while keeping it accessible. Federated learning keeps sensitive data local and shares only model updates for biomedical and genomic research. Edge computing processes data near its source to cut the latency and cost of shipping it to distant clouds.9 LEO satellites reach remote zones terrestrial networks cannot. Next-generation 6G connectivity is being designed around distributed data management.
Adopting the technology alone is not enough. Decentralisation without a matching governance model produces fragmentation and integration chaos. A federated governance model applies shared data policies and standards across domains while preserving autonomy.10 The technological shift requires a simultaneous build-up of political and institutional capacity. The hardware pathway delivers sovereignty only when paired with the governance capacity to direct it.
⁹ Decolonizing Research (2025), §"The Technological Shift"; Milvus, "Federated vs centralized learning." ¹⁰ Decolonizing Research (2025), §"Emerging Data Architectures."
The sovereign infrastructure exists, but it has barely begun
The working models can give a misleading impression that the problem is being solved. RedCLARA's sovereign infrastructure could ultimately serve roughly 12,000 institutions. Only about 3,000 are currently connected. Three-quarters remain unconnected.11 The sovereign alternative is not hypothetical but it is not mature. It has a very long way to go.
Working models like BELLA, India Stack and the African data-centre boom prove the path is real. The gap between what the infrastructure could serve and what it currently reaches defines the scale of the work ahead. An institution weighing whether to invest in sovereign infrastructure sees the foundation is there to build on. The early-mover advantage remains available because the build-out has barely started.
¹¹ Decolonizing Research (2025), §"The Sovereignty Gap"; GÉANT, "World Regions — Latin America."
Decolonising research is a long-term act of will, not a technical upgrade
Decolonising the digital research ecosystem is a long-term undertaking requiring sustained political will and collaboration. It relies on proactive policy and governance through data residency, open standards and interoperability. It needs diversified and sustainable funding from public investment and regional development banks. It demands human and social capital with local expertise and ethical frameworks. It requires South-South collaboration.12
No single pillar suffices. Technology without governance fragments, governance without funding stalls, and funding without local capacity reproduces dependency. The sharpest ethical demand sits inside the human-capital pillar. Capacity must be built to respect and empower marginalised and Indigenous communities through reciprocity. The construction of sovereign infrastructure must not repeat the extractive patterns it was meant to end.
¹² Decolonizing Research (2025), §"A Strategic Framework"; ARDC, "Indigenous Data"; AfricaConnect3.
Decolonizing Research offers a critical analysis of data colonialism in global research infrastructure. It provides a strategic framework for building sovereign digital ecosystems across the Global South. These seven insights act as entry points.