BOX 4.6

The Environmental Functions of African Urban Commons

**Eco-friendly practices within urban commons:** Defko (Senegal) provides access to a repair cafe for artisans working with metal, fabric, dye, and glass painting, the goal being "unplanned obsolescence" (Goyon 2016). In fab labs, low-cost materials and recycling lead to frugal and inexpensive technical solutions. Responsible practices (limited consumption, recycling) are also at the heart of the efforts of hybrid cultural spaces. At the Pikine Ouest playing fields and the Dassasgho fitness trail in Ouagadougou, use of concrete is minimal. Furniture is made by local artisans and benches from tree trunks on the site. This land had been abandoned by the public authorities but has been developed by those living in the neighborhood using local or recycled materials. Despite its limited means, it promotes the circular economy while creating nice places to spend time.

**Support for eco-friendly projects in terms of urban agriculture:** The Kêr Thiossane community garden (Senegal) provides training sessions on permaculture practices. WoeLab (Togo) is developing the Urban Attic project that aims to turn unauthorized rubbish dumps into vegetable gardens for organic farming, store the food produced in the city's fab labs, and provide a local platform for purchasing organic products.

Urban commons have a broad social impact (box 4.7) on their members (employees, volunteers, and contributors), their external stakeholders directly or indirectly affected by their work (recipients, users, and clients), and society in general (Gayet and Ung 2021). Commons are first and foremost champions of shared values relating to commitment, intermediation, and connecting people, disciplines, scales, and worlds (Besson 2021). They develop projects in response to specific societal problems: juvenile delinquency, gender discrimination, humanitarian challenges, and health crises. With regard to fab labs, the creation of communities of practices also ensures that "technical activities are seen as social activities guaranteeing cohesion between individuals" and therefore strengthening the local social fabric (Mboa Nkoudou 2020, 54). Some projects target farmers or rural populations and therefore have social effects beyond the limits of the neighborhood or even the city.

Fragile Economic Models and Strategies for Dissemination via Hives

*Hybrid economic models by necessity*

The economic models of Africa's urban commons remain fragile and can quickly fluctuate. There is no standard template as such, but the business models of urban commons appear to be based on a variety of activities that can be
BOX 4.7

The Social Functions of African Urban Commons

**Combating juvenile delinquency:** For the founder of BabyLab (Côte d'Ivoire), the fab lab is a way of giving young people something to do outside school and encouraging them to imagine, create, and produce (Leyronas, Liotard, and Prié 2018). BabyLab wants to make every individual an actor for change to achieve social transformation. The founder of OuagaLab (Burkina Faso) also created the Mogtédo fab lab specifically to combat crime and small-scale gold mining by young people.

**Combating gender discrimination:** "Stop VBG" (Violences basées sur le genre) (Stop Gender-Based Violence), created by BloLab (Benin), is a mobile app for reporting gender-based violence. This project was developed with input from the "Imagination for People" (IP Benin) community and support from the United Nations Development Programme. Defko (Senegal) and BabyLab (Côte d'Ivoire) are involved in specific action for women, as is Sahel Fablab (Mauritania), whose managers are all women. The Kër Thiossane community garden in Senegal is exclusively reserved for women.

**Humanitarian focus:** FabLab Espace Créatif (Djibouti) welcomes and trains migrants from Ethiopia, Somalia, and the Republic of Yemen. Workshops focus on typing and how to use a keyboard.

**Solutions during a health crisis:** A number of initiatives were launched during the COVID-19 (coronavirus) health crisis. The Réseau francophone des fablabs d'Afrique de l'Ouest (Francophone Network of West African Fab Labs) launched "Makers Nord Sud contre le coronavirus" (North South Makers against Coronavirus) in 2020, in association with Réseau français des fablabs (French Fab Lab Network) and Réseau Bretagne solidaire (Brittany Solidarity Network). This project provided fab labs with the equipment to produce face shields and even ventilators. Similar initiatives were developed in East Africa. For example, FabLab Espace Créatif (Djibouti) sent FabLab Winam (Kenya) models for 3D printed face shields.

**Effects beyond the city limits:** BloLab (Benin) is developing the Ipatic digital app for farmers. It helps them link up with one another and includes a remote-controlled automatic crop irrigation system. BloLab has trained approximately 250 farmers. At OuagaLab (Burkina Faso), most projects also focus on farmers: a low-cost wind turbine producing 1 kilowatt-hour, a public weather station providing climate data (temperatures and humidity levels) on the city and agricultural areas sent by text message, a platform for recycling and marketing local agricultural products, and a kit for farmers to alert one another when a parasite disease is observed. Sahel Fablab (Mauritania) has designed and produced solar cookers to reduce firewood consumption in rural areas, as well as an automatic irrigation project controlled via a mobile app that includes a drip system and can also measure soil moisture. Mobile cultural initiatives, such as the Ishyo Arts Centre in Rwanda, are sometimes held outside the city.
funded from difference sources, thereby ensuring greater independence and less
vulnerability (see the hybrid model defined in chapter 1).

Originally, many of the founders of these spaces wanted them to be open and free to all. However, economic reality caught up with them, and they were forced to consider an economic model that could guarantee the sustainability of their activities. Some spaces received funding from international organizations very early on in their development, especially if they were not receiving any support from local bodies (Mboa Nkoudou 2020). However, all the spaces have developed hybrid models over time. Membership, volunteering, grants, contributions to costs by local residents (to hire the space), income from activities (catering, bar), donations in cash or in kind, various services (expertise, project support, adult education), participatory funding, and partnerships are all used to help balance budgets.

Most of these spaces were founded by men and women who initially used their own funds. For example, the founder of Terra Alta in Ghana funded almost the entire renovation of her space by selling her artwork. Some were able to obtain financial support (via corporate foundations, states, and international organizations). Defko (Senegal) is an exception. When it was created, it immediately received a relief fund from the OIF to purchase equipment and then a grant from the Orange Foundation for its training program for children. Similarly, Fablab Espace Créatif (Djibouti) has been supported by the IOM from the very beginning. BabyLab (Côte d'Ivoire) received financial support as it developed. In particular, it accrued a financial grant from Orange Solidarity, part of the Orange Foundation, and funding from the French government. Among the hybrid cultural spaces, Kipaji Lab (Kenya) has received financial support from the nongovernmental organization Zuri Works.

Many of Africa's urban commons have raised money through crowdfunding (BabyLab in Côte d'Ivoire, BloLab in Benin, OuagaLab in Burkina Faso, and Terra Alta in Ghana). Some have received bursaries (Winam in Kenya) or scientific awards (BabyLab in Côte d'Ivoire). Fab labs offer membership to their users, but numbers remain very low. The Ishyo Arts Centre requires artists to pay the center a third of any revenue they earn that is connected to the sale of their work in that space. Some of the activities and services on offer involve payment of a fee. For example, fab labs provide free digital manufacturing training courses, but there are also paid versions via partnerships with either schools or universities or with incubators. For example, BabyLab (Côte d'Ivoire) provides services to the incubator Incub'Ivoir, and Defko does the same for the Senegalese incubator Cetim. Some hybrid spaces hire out part of the site for private use. Terra Alta in Ghana uses an unusual credit-based system where a contribution to the day-to-day work of the space (cleaning, childcare, art awareness, and teaching) can be exchanged for use of the rehearsal rooms. Finally, some places provide
incubator spaces that give them an income. Currently, WoeLab incorporates nine startups that belong to the community under the Silicon Village banner. The young people involved are co-members. Kipaji Lab (Kenya) has an incubator space enabling artists to receive partial payment.

Most economic models for urban commons are precarious. However, they are adapting to the places where they are being developed and particularly to the legislation of countries that do not yet have a specific or appropriate status for them. The area they choose to specialize in is crucial.

### Dissemination strategies: Off-shoots and hives

The founder's personality and links to national and international academic and economic communities are major assets if a space is to be sustainable. Knowledge of the environment, discussions during meetings and conferences, and trips overseas are essential for networking and forging ties with potential sources of funding. GreenLab (Nigeria) is indicative in this respect. Its founder is Nigerian but lives in Germany and works with a German fab lab. He is involved in research into innovation and how African fab labs operate and therefore benefits from the related network of contacts.

Belonging to a regional, or even international, network appears to be a necessity. The network acts simultaneously as a learning community and a vehicle for dissemination. Research conducted by Kebir and Wallet reveals that purpose and a symbolic arsenal (the narrative supporting projects) are decisive if these communities are to spread and be reproduced. The authors identify two routes for dissemination: “off-shoots” and “hives” (Kebir and Wallet 2021).

Dissemination via off-shoots requires an umbrella organization that can support the creation of initiatives implementing its goal and help give a group structure. Its goal is not expansion and management of several sites but rather to spread, reproduce, and replicate its concept and its approach across the region. In Rwanda, the Ishyo Arts Centre, a leading cultural center, has inspired 15 similar spaces.

The dynamics of hives (working as a network) is different. The umbrella organization develops a project that centers on the space where it performs its work. This site is unique, and the aim is not to reproduce it or replicate it. However, anyone wanting to develop a similar approach can take inspiration from it. Dissemination is achieved by people leaving the site (the hive) at a given moment to pursue their own activities and found their own community that is independent of the umbrella organization.

### “Collaborative City” or “Commons-Invested City”: Two Possible Visions for African Cities

Local authorities are struggling to address the challenges facing cities and urban areas more widely, but the dynamism of commons initiatives and the
creativity of their solutions could galvanize public stakeholders to take an interest.

An entire mosaic of circumstances and relationships exists between African urban commons and state intervention mechanisms. Although some commons are part of larger projects championed by local communities, others remain specialized niche spaces for social experimentation. Kebir and Wallet propose three visions of a city where commons have a role: an “enhanced city,” a “disputed city,” and a “reinvested city” (Kebir and Wallet 2021). On the basis of what we have studied, we propose two of our own: a “collaborative city” and a “commons-invested city.”

The first vision is that of a city “collaborating” with urban commons. In this configuration, African urban commons are islands that emerge to address welfare issues (access to resources, new local services, education, culture). This vision relies on these initiatives being viable in the long term and their ability to transform their initial experimental approach into a sustainable one. Local communities can sometimes sincerely support these initiatives. The enthusiasm generated by the Kër Thiossane community garden in Senegal, for example, encouraged the town hall to install public lighting around the space. However, state authorities can be slow to act or even pursue strategies preventing the sustainability of urban commons. The latter remain a safety valve within the dominant economic model, a refuge for those excluded from the heart of that model and confined to the margins of the system. Juxtaposing these two mechanisms (state intervention, on the one hand, and urban commons, on the other) would surely have an impact on the spatial configurations of African cities that have been “atomized [and] fragmented into sub-spaces based on function” (Mayer and Soumahoro 2014).

The second vision is a city “invested” by urban commons. It is characterized by initiatives that fill in any gaps left by city policy and have a close connection with local communities or are even initiated by them (box 4.8). This vision of a city is based on blending commons methods and state intervention mechanisms. By focusing more on collective mechanisms for creating and managing urban resources, commons enhance the local authorities’ urban project by seeking greater inclusion, equity, and deliberative democracy. Some urban commons (the Ishyo Arts Centre in Rwanda, WoeLab in Togo, and the Assalamalekoum organization in Mauritania) claim to follow this approach and highlight the inspirational nature of their initiatives. In this respect, processes associated with commons complement those described in literature on territorial development by combining economic considerations with those connected to societal challenges (ecological transition, education, welfare, and gender equality) and environmental challenges (recycling and thrift).
BOX 4.8

Urban Fabric Initiatives: From Temporary Urbanism to
Transitional Urbanism

In 2018, the Agence française de développement (AFD) (French Development Agency) set up a mechanism called “Pépinières urbaines” (Urban Fabric Initiatives)ª in what was intended to be an immediately visible contribution to the participation of local residents in the development of their city and their neighborhoods (Besson 2022). Alongside drawing up 5-year and 10-year plans and offering support with their implementation, this initiative sought to experiment with and support new ways of shaping cities. By bringing together local communities, the public contracting authorities of large urban projects, and civil society stakeholders, the goal was to contribute to encouraging new practices through micro-projects.

The nature of any potential results is very broad and will be formed by the discus-
sions between local residents and users, as well as the public contracting authorities.
Support will be provided by organizations specializing in these mechanisms (such as
le Gret, urbaSEN, urbaMonde, and Cabanon Vertical). These initiatives are presented
as citizen initiative hubs supporting the city's stakeholders in codesigning and co-
constructing innovative and participatory micro-actions for developing and reactivat-
ing public spaces.

At the beginning of 2022, urban fabric initiatives were rolled out in Burkina Faso in two central zones of Ouagadougou (Tampouy and Grand Est). In the long term, these areas will be the recipients of a larger infrastructure program (as part of the Ouagadougou Sustainable Development Project implemented by the town hall and funded by AFD during its second phase). The initiatives were also introduced in Dakar in connection with future public transport equipment, in Tunisia in neighborhoods covered by National Programs for Renovating and Integrating Districts with Insecure Housing, and in Abidjan in disadvantaged neighborhoods covered by Côte d'Ivoire's Project to Improve Abidjan's Redesigned Districts championed by the Ministère en charge de la Construction, du Logement et de l'Urbanisme (Ministry for Construction, Housing and Town Planning). The micro-actions cocreated by users and civil society organizations include interim development of sites (fitness trails, rest areas for people using public transport, roundabouts), equipment like mobile radio, and places for meeting and creativity, as well as events (e.g., sports tournaments).

This process was inspired by the urban movements known as transitional or temporary urbanism and, more widely, as co-urbanism.ᵇ It has been scientifically assessed and monitored,ᶜ providing an analysis of any benefits or issues arising from this type of “urban lab.” The assessment indicates that, at the first sites, the micro-actions of urban fabric initiatives are making a decisive contribution to improving how the places chosen are used and their environment. The implementation of a participatory approach to urbanism is widely recognized and has been positively received. These urban fabric initiatives are also making a vital contribution to more horizontal organizational innovations with powerful communication and mediation tools between government

(continued next page)
Box 4.8 (continued)

authorities, nongovernmental organization stakeholders, and citizens. Cooperative
processes have therefore been bolstered and the way in which management methods
and the urban fabric are viewed is changing.

However, despite hubs starting to spread the idea of urban fabric initiatives, their impact on the local economy and the transformation of urban planning remains limited. These initiatives face a number of dilemmas that have still not been resolved (Besson 2022). More dialogue and greater awareness within institutions, as well as a broader scope for the initiatives, are probably necessary. They could then evolve from being part of tactical and temporary urbanism to more structured forms of transitory and transitional urbanism. d

a. https://pepinieres-urbaines.org/

b. Report, Student Workshop, École d'Urbanisme de Paris (Paris School of Urban Planning): Co-urbanismes (pepurbaeup.wixsite.com).

c. Raphaël Besson (Villes Innovations, PACTE-CNRS), with scientific support from Armelle Choplin (University of Geneva) and Jérôme Lombard (IRD).

d. For definitions, see Besson (2018).

Conclusion

Urban commons are a familiar sight in Europe and North America. Confronted by the limits of neoliberalism and its excesses, citizens are engaging in numerous initiatives, testing new cooperative models, inventing new narratives, and mobilizing within wider communities and networks. Many say they belong to a “movement”: a movement of fab labs, a movement of third places, a movement of commons.

Africa's situation is different. Urban commons are emerging in Sub-Saharan Africa in a more isolated manner and, like the West African fab labs, resemble an archipelago at best. They are responding to essential requirements not currently met by either government authorities or the market, while also endeavoring to rebuild strained social relations. They are the basis for innovative forms and methods of commons-based entrepreneurship (collective work and projects) founded on shared means, resources, and goals in terms of satisfying needs, without seeking a profit (see chapter 1). Africa's urban commons are raising new dilemmas (Besson 2022): how these initiatives are to be scaled up, their funding models, the role of "citizen users," how projects championed can be made more sustainable, their inclusion in very localized urban economies, and how they cooperate among themselves. It would be a mistake to view them through a homogeneous prism. Their purpose, how they operate, their motivation, and their economic models are very diverse. The reasons for people's
involvement in urban commons are also varied: pragmatic, personal, profes-
sional, and sometimes political and ideological. Africa's hybrid cultural spaces
and fab labs are therefore following different trajectories. For example, fab labs
in West Africa display a societal vocation, while some fab labs in East Africa are
seeking to become startup incubators over time.

That being the case, what potential do these African urban commons have in
terms of providing a sustainable response to the needs that motivated their ini-
tial emergence, and what role can they play in reinventing urban policies? Their
vulnerability is obvious: their economic models remain precarious, collective
dynamics are fragile, and institutional recognition is inadequate. However, their
numbers are rising and their presence is increasingly essential for local popu-
lations. Their experiments can stimulate visions of alternative futures (Graeber
2004). Is it therefore time to consider new ways of shaping and managing cities
that include a role for this model, while resisting the temptation to standardize it?

Notes

1. "Fab lab" is a contraction of "fabrication laboratory."

2. "Why sports and development go hand in hand," https://blogs.worldbank.org/education/why-sports-and-development-go-hand-hand.

3. "Sport and development in Africa: What is the role of the public sector?" https://sportencommun.org/en/actualite/sport-and-development-in-africa-what-is-the-role-of-the-public-sector/.

4. Article from *Libération*, 2018, interview with the founder of the Ishyo Arts Centre: Carole Karemera, j'irai le dire chez vous – Libération (liberation.fr).

5. Article from *Libération*, 2018, Carole Karemera, j'irai le dire chez vous – Libération (liberation.fr).

6. Les fab lab au cœur des défis numériques en Afrique (theconversation.com).

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Chapter 5

# Digital Commons and
Entrepreneurship: Alternative or
Complementary Approaches?

Jan Krewer, Stéphanie Leyronas, and Thomas Mboa

## Introduction

Digital technologies occupy an important position in development strategies in Sub-Saharan Africa today. Numerous arguments have been advanced in their support: the growing power of digital entrepreneurship, combined with the promise of a leap forward in technology, could make exponential growth possible, contribute to the transition of African economies, and transform African countries into “knowledge economies” or propel them toward the “fourth industrial revolution.”

However, empirical studies demonstrate that at this stage, digital entrepreneurship does not succeed in overcoming the structural inequalities of digital economies that are faced with both local and international challenges (Friederici, Wahome, and Graham 2020). At the local level, although certain countries in Sub-Saharan Africa do stand out from the rest, most of them still wrestle with the challenges of the second and third industrial revolutions. Electricity and connectivity, for example, which are crucial for making optimal use of digital resources, are still lacking. At the international level, the African continent is confronted with the reality of a global digital economy marked by significant inequalities and divisions, as well as by methods of value capture dominated by a handful of innovation centers where intellectual property is concentrated.

In this chapter, we argue that in Sub-Saharan Africa, digital commons-based entrepreneurship is necessarily more equitable and inclusive and promotes sustainable local development of communities and regions (Mboa
Nkoudou 2017). We make use of a catalogue¹ of Sub-Saharan Africa's digital commons, along with a literature review and a series of semi-structured interviews with digital experts and members of commons. The term *Sub-Saharan African commons* refers here to digital resources—such as code, information, and digital materials—whose communities of users and contributors are located in Sub-Saharan Africa. It does not include physical commons that make use of digital resources.

The first section provides—at the risk of taking a few shortcuts—a very brief overview of the digital strategies that are currently developed in Sub-Saharan Africa and of the underlying theories. It goes on to discuss parts of the debate in the literature about the limits of this dominant view, which promotes a form of digital entrepreneurship based on privatization, the division of knowledge, and competition. The section concludes by discussing the opportunities that digital commons offer in this context.

The second section showcases the range of digital commons in Sub-Saharan Africa by analyzing content, data, and software commons separately from those based on shared physical materials or open-plan layouts. This section highlights the importance of users and contributors in Sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that there is a wide variety of digital commons on the continent and that these commons participate in the Sustainable Development Goals.

The third and final section offers an interdisciplinary analysis of the opportunities offered by digital commons in Sub-Saharan Africa. It also points to the challenges faced by these commons. The section concludes with the observation that those engaged with African digital commons tend to see them not as alternatives to the traditional model of entrepreneurship but rather as a complementary approach.

## What Role Should Digital Technology Play in Commons-Based Entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa?

Since the early 2000s, a consensus has emerged among large international organizations on the benefits of digital technologies for development. The African Union's Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa (2020–2030) states that digitalization is “stimulating job creation and contributing to addressing poverty, reducing inequality, facilitating the delivery of goods and services, and contributing to the achievement of Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals” (African Union 2020, 1). This international consensus is sustained by the promise of development that digital technology holds for the African continent.
# Promises of Digital Technology in Sub-Saharan African Public Development Strategies

## Digital technologies are central to many African strategies

The majority of African countries have identified digital technology as a major lever for development (World Bank Group 2016) and have largely begun their digital transformation (Nyakanini et al. 2020). Numerous arguments have been put forward (Goldfarb and Tucker 2019). These strategies include not only the transformation and optimization of all sectors of the economy but also innovation and entrepreneurship. They put emphasis on replicating the trajectories of Western startups, with rapid, exponential growth. In this way, they hold out the hope of quickly transitioning to information societies and knowledge-based economies through leapfrogging. This term refers to the idea of leaps that will allow Sub-Saharan Africa to skip over stages of development. Implementing these kinds of strategies requires the development of internet infrastructure and access to digital technologies in order to offer African populations the same opportunities to innovate and develop solutions as elsewhere in the world (box 5.1).

## BOX 5.1

### Digital Cameroon 2016–2020 Strategy

In Cameroon in 2015, the cell phone penetration rate was around 50 percent, while the rate of broadband internet access was around 4 percent. The communication and digital product market is still nascent but already dynamic. The Ministère des Postes et Télécommunications (Ministry of Postal and Telecommunication Services), which is responsible for sectoral policy for telecommunications and information and communication technologies (ICTs), began prioritizing the issue of the digital economy as early as 2015 (Tatchim 2018). In 2016, the government adopted the Plan stratégique de l'économie numérique (Strategic Plan for the Digital Economy), which aims to increase digital technology's contribution to gross domestic product from 5 percent in 2016 to 10 percent by 2020. It also seeks to encourage the creation of 40,000 jobs by 2020. In particular, the plan focuses on developing broadband infrastructure, increasing the production of digital content, achieving the digital transformation of all sectors of the economy, promoting digital culture by generalizing the use of ICTs in an information society, strengthening digital confidence, and developing a local digital industry (Republic of Cameroon 2020).

The plan has been only partially carried out. That said, Cameroon gives ICTs and digital technologies an important place in its Stratégie nationale de développement 2020-2030 (National Development Strategy 2020-2030), the goal of which is to make Cameroon “a new industrialized country.” Its priorities include the development of digital infrastructure, the modernization of public administration, the digitization of the land registry, decentralization, and open government.
*Leapfrogging: The cell phone example*

The deployment of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is the first leap made by the African continent, which entered the “digital age” through widespread cell phone use (Huet 2017). Since 2010, the number of cell phone users has increased 10-fold in Sub-Saharan Africa. Today, 86 per- cent of the population is covered by these networks (GSMA 2020), or 930 mil- lion people in 2020 (GSMA 2021), compared with 620 million in 2011 (GSMA 2012). Forecasts predict 1.1 billion connections by 2025 (GSMA 2021). The rapid development of mobile technology represents a technological leap over the intermediate step of landline technology (Berrou and Mellet 2020). Ghana, for example, has 131 active cell phone lines for every landline.²

The rapid spread of mobile technology has made important African inno- vations possible. In particular, it has provided the continent's marginalized population with access to numerous services. The most often cited example is access to mobile financial services, particularly payments using Unstructured Supplementary Service Data technology.³ This technology is used for 9 out of 10 mobile payment transactions in Sub-Saharan African (GSMA 2018). Today, 12 percent of Africans pay their bills, send money, or make payments using their phones (Fox and Van Droogenbroeck 2017).

In addition to payments, the African mobile revolution has gone hand in hand with the strong economic growth of African countries over the past few decades. Many sectors of the economy have used mobile technology to develop new services. For example, many mobile platforms in the agricultural sector, such as Esoko in Ghana, allow farmers to have better access to information. Significant public investment in telecommunications has aided in the development of a new economic sector that represents 10 percent of Africa's gross domestic product (GDP) and now plays a critical role in the continent's economy (GSMA 2019).

*A vision based on the promises of digital entrepreneurship for development*

The development of entrepreneurship, particularly entrepreneurship that is based on the Western startup model, is one of the pillars of African digital strategies. By opening up new markets and simplifying the process of scaling up a busi- ness, startups symbolize the promise of rapid, exponential growth. In Africa, this vision is bolstered by the idea that digital technologies allow anyone with an internet connection to participate in the global economy (Friederici, Wahome, and Graham 2020). The contribution of Africa's younger generations to the devel- opment of digital technology's potential on the continent is highly anticipated (Nubukpo 2019), and the youthfulness of the continent's population structure is considered “an enormous opportunity in this digital era” (African Union 2020, 1).

For investors, supporting digital entrepreneurship is a way to boost a country's economic competitiveness and to create new jobs (Hjort and Poulsen 2019) and industries. As a result, “in just a few years, hundreds of millions
and maybe billions of dollars have been invested in plans for tech cities, entrepreneurship trainings, coworking spaces, innovation prizes, and investment funds" (Friederici, Wahome, and Graham 2020, 1).

**The Limits of Digital Entrepreneurship: An Economy with Structural Inequalities**

Digital technologies create new divisions not only between countries but also between organizations and individuals. These divisions often reflect other inequalities, particularly of income and gender, which may be compounded by the introduction of digital technologies (UNCTAD 2021). As Friederici, Wahome, and Graham (2020) point out, the development of digital entrepreneurship faces numerous structural challenges, at both the local and international levels. The world of digital technologies is rife with divisions that reflect deep inequalities between countries, organizations, and individuals in terms of access to digital technology and the capacity to seize the opportunities that they offer.

*Structural challenges at the local level*

The obstacles to taking advantage of these opportunities are first and foremost infrastructural. Most Sub-Saharan African countries still face the challenges of the second and third industrial revolutions. Data from the International Telecommunication Union reveal a sharp increase in internet use between 2010 and 2020 in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, and Guinea.⁴ At around 32 percent, however, the average rate remains low. Africa is now connected to the undersea fiber-optic cables that transmit more than 99 percent of international telecommunications (Goujon and Cariolle 2019). However, the continent still lacks sufficient infrastructure to connect its interior, as well as local content infrastructure (e.g., data centers and content delivery networks). As a result, Africa remains dependent on foreign infrastructure, which results in slower network flows, higher prices, and less development of local services and content (Internet Society 2017a).

The obstacles are also social. In the Central African Republic, the cost of one month of internet access is equivalent to more than one-and-a-half times the country's per capita income (GSMA 2019). The lack of digital "literacy," or the inability to make optimal use of a computer and the internet (World Bank Group 2019), exacerbates existing inequalities and even generates new ones. African women and people who live in rural areas remain the most marginalized with respect to digital technologies (World Bank Group 2021).

*The centralization of the global digital economy*

The structural centralization of power and value is one of the primary characteristics of the global digital economy (UNCTAD 2019). This situation can be explained, in part, by the contemporary geography of innovation.
Innovation networks may have become globalized, but innovation itself is centralized in a handful of “innovation hubs,” most of which are located in previously industrialized economies (WIPO 2019). This centralization can also be explained by the monopolistic tendencies of ICTs that lead to winner-take-all situations. Above all, however, the most famous digital platforms have managed to attain dominant positions thanks to the enormous amounts of capital available to them, which has allowed them to conquer markets by buying up the competition or by operating at a loss for years on end (UNCTAD 2019).

Only paltry amounts of financing are available to African entrepreneurs: “VCs [venture capitalists] invested $3.9 million per day in African startups in 2020; while in the US, startups received VC investment of $428 million per day” (Afric Arena 2021, 6). What’s more, only a few national governments can generate enough funding for research and development, in the form of grants, tax credits, or public investment, to actively support the development of startups that can compete in the world economy. As a result, African countries do not generate much value in the global digital economy.

The limited availability of financing in Sub-Saharan Africa and the unequal distribution of intellectual property rights with respect to existing technologies are structural barriers to the development of digital entrepreneurship in the region. The digital entrepreneurship that does exist is not equally distributed across the continent, nor is it undergoing rapid and exponential growth. It tends instead to be focused on local or regional markets and to incorporate local infrastructure (Friederici, Wahome, and Graham 2020).

## Commons: A Different Approach to the Digital Economy

### Collaborative models as alternatives to traditional forms of digital entrepreneurship

While the digital revolution has produced numerous examples of highly centralized international companies that use intellectual property rights to generate economic rents, it has also allowed digital commons, which are non-proprietary and open collaborative models, to attain unprecedented scales (Open AIR 2020).

The digital commons movement originated in the 1990s, in Western countries, in response to the increasing privatization and division of knowledge. It was seen from the start as an alternative model (Peugeot 2014; Verdier and Murciano 2017). Initially, it built on the free software movement (see definitions in box 5.2) started by the American programmer and activist Richard Stallman. The free software movement began as a reaction to the appropriation of computer code by private companies in the 1980s, which ran counter to the principles of hackers, who, at the time, were still programming openly and collaboratively (Broca and Coriat 2015). Stallman argues that the private
ownership of information delays progress, obstructs scientific development, and corrupts the ethos of research. He proposes new ways of sharing software source code and new kinds of legal instruments. As opposed to the copyright, he created the “copyleft,” which is founded on four fundamental freedoms: the freedom of the user to use, copy, modify, and distribute the source code (Stallman 2002).

Beyond these legal innovations, which deal with copyright, there are also specific organizational forms concerning the contribution and participation of citizens. These new forms can mobilize a large number of people through open platforms and are largely based on “peer production” (Benkler 2007). They have inspired many collaborative projects, such as Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, and open-access scientific journals. The fact that most of the software powering the servers that host data and services in the cloud is now open source shows that it is possible to build transnational shared infrastructures through broad, collaborative efforts.

These resources generate a growing interest within international organizations (UN 2020; UNCTAD 2021; UNESCO 2017) and certain African governments.⁵ In its digital transformation strategy, the African Union refers to free educational resources, open data, open access to research results, and the use of open norms and standards to foster interoperability across Africa, particularly for public digital services, such as digital identity (African Union 2020).

## Concepts and definitions

Digital commons differ from land-based commons (see chapter 2) in several ways (Coriat 2015) (see box 5.2):

* Digital commons, unlike land-based commons, are made up of nonrivalrous goods,⁶ and so they are not subject to, or at risk of, being overexploited.

* Digital commons that are maintained over time and become institutionalized usually set rules for the use of the resource using free licenses, so as to benefit from the opportunities of scale that digital technologies offer.

* Whether digital commons persist often depends on the existence of several groups that are engaged in the production or use of the resource and that have a variety of relationships, interests, and roles with respect to the shared resource. Because the benefits of a digital resource are often indirect, the community comprises multiple different groups. By contrast, in land-based commons, the community is often restricted to the users of the resource, who are also responsible for managing it. An open database, for example, could be set up by a group that is entirely distinct from the individuals or organizations that might make use of this data and sometimes even distinct from the group that stands to benefit from the new information or services generated from this data.
BOX 5.2

**Some Definitions Related to Digital Commons**

**Free license:** A free license allows others to reuse a creator's work freely, according to certain conditions set by the license, without needing to contact the creator. There are several standard types of licenses, and their rights and obligations for users vary in degree of permissiveness (e.g., commercial use, the right to create derivative works, share-alike, etc.)

**Free software:** Free software is based on a free mode of production and distribution. As opposed to proprietary software, which is developed within an organization and whose source code is confidential, the source code of free software is completely public, and it can be modified, copied, and redistributed at will. Licenses that include all of these rights are recognized by the Free Software Foundation.

**Open access:** This term refers to free and unrestricted access to scholarly literature, and in particular to its "free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself."ª

**Open data:** Open data is data that is openly accessible and exploitable by anyone for any purpose. This data can be of private or public origin. This kind of data is transmitted under an open license that guarantees that it can be freely accessed and reused by anyone.

**Open hardware:** Open hardware, or open-source hardware, refers to technology related to computer hardware for which all design and manufacturing information is made available through open-source licenses in order to make it easier for others to make, reuse, or repair the object themselves.

**Open-source software:** Open-source software and free software are based on similar user licenses, but they should not be confused. *Free software* is a movement that preaches philosophical and political values based on Stallman's four freedoms, while *open-source software* is a method of software development and dissemination that makes it possible to reap the economic benefits of open, decentralized modes of production (Broca and Coriat 2015). Open-source licenses are recognized by the Open Source Initiative.

**Open Standards:** According to Free Software Foundation Europe, an Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is

* Subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a manner equally available to all parties

* Without any components or extensions that have dependencies on formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open Standard themselves

* Free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilization by any party or in any business model

(continued next page)
Box 5.2 (continued)

* Managed and further developed independently of any single vendor in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third parties

* Available in multiple complete implementations by competing vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all partiesᵇ

Open Standards guarantee that systems are interoperable—that is, they allow hardware, software, and protocols to work together and share information.

**Open Educational Resources:** According to UNESCO, "Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others."ᶜ

In sum, the concept of the digital commons can be used to foster the development of new social dynamics that emphasize community and governance, beyond the technical apparatuses and resources involved. This governance is more or less inclusive and contributive (Broca 2021), but it allows for the development of capacity and the creation of value at the local level. It is this approach to digital commons that guided the cataloguing presented in the following section.

# A Catalogue of Digital Commons in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Range of Resources and Communities Contributing to the Continent's Development

## The Different Resources Associated with Digital Commons in Sub-Saharan Africa and Their Contribution to Development

This study, though it does not claim to be either exhaustive or representative, shows that numerous digital commons are a part of Africans' everyday lives. We have identified several types of digital commons in the fields of education, agriculture, rural development and biodiversity, open government, energy, digital technology and telecommunications, transport and mobility, and health. We divide them into four sections, although some appear in more than one category: content commons, data commons, free software, and a final category that includes open hardware commons and open standards and protocols commons, which are most often found in hybrid places like fab labs (Mboa Nkoudou 2020) (see chapter 4).

<footnote>a. https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read/.</footnote>

<footnote>b. https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/standards/standards.en.html.</footnote>

<footnote>c. https://www.unesco.org/en/communication-information/open-solutions/open-educational-resources.</footnote>
*Content commons*

The potential of content commons² such as AfricArXiv (box 5.3) in Sub-Saharan Africa has been recognized and documented, particularly in the fields of education and research. Advocates of open access argue that the convergence of the scientific tradition and ICTs offers an unprecedented opportunity that will “accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge.”³ It is this preoccupation with knowledge-sharing that has motivated several international organizations to commit to promoting open educational resources. According to UNESCO, open educational resources “provide a strategic opportunity to improve the quality of learning and knowledge-sharing as well as improve policy dialogue, knowledge-sharing and capacity-building.”⁴ Inclusion is valued here in addition to the basic tenets of open access. Beyond the “legal and technical issues of accessibility,” African digital commons make it possible to respond to demands to “develop the knowledge and skills generated in the periphery” and not to “deepen the scientific divide”— namely, the dependency on knowledge and techniques imported to Africa from abroad (Piron et al. 2017).¹⁰

Various initiatives have thus emerged in Sub-Saharan Africa, driven by the public and private sectors but also managed by communities of contributors (Koomar and Jull 2020). This is the case, for example, of the South African Institute for Distance Education's African Storybook Initiative. The initiative is home to more than 3,000 unique storybooks that are shared, under free licenses, by a multitude of contributors in over 200 African languages. The number of African Storybook users was estimated at nearly three million in 2021. The purpose of the initiative is to provide content that not only is adapted for a particular learning context (especially the native language) but also fosters a sense of ownership among learners.

*Data commons*

Since the 2000s, similar values to the creation of content commons have driven the open data and data commons¹¹ movement. According to the World Bank, an increase in the production and availability of data leads to increased transparency and accountability, improved public policies and services, and increased economic opportunities (World Bank Group 2021). Open data is often managed by public bodies, but it can also be handled by communities themselves (box 5.4). Such is the case of OpenStreetMap, which is attempting to use a collaborative approach to create a freely editable database of geographic data about the world.

In general, open databases managed by commons in Sub-Saharan Africa serve a variety of needs. For example, a scientific community may want to
AfricArXiv

AfricArXiv is an open digital archive for open access to African research. It was launched in 2018, in Kumasi, Ghana, at the first African Open Science and Hardware Summit, which brought together scientists from Africa and abroad. AfricArXiv is an open, decentralized repository intended for use by African populations. Its technical infrastructure is provided by the Center for Open Science, a nonprofit organization that provides researchers with open-source infrastructure.

AfricArXiv allows African researchers to publish the results of their research immediately and for free. They can thereby receive feedback on their work, improve it, and identify partners for future projects. The site helps to publicize African research, disseminate African knowledge, allow exchanges between African researchers to take place, and encourage intercontinental collaboration. AfricArXiv seeks to address the specific problems faced by African researchers: a lack of international visibility for their work, limited funding, language barriers, and bias and discrimination when it comes to working with international publications and research networks.

AfricArXiv currently has almost 400 preprints. The community of contributors is made up of African scholars based on the continent or at host institutions outside Africa, as well as of non-African scholars summarizing research that was either conducted on the continent or that is related to African issues.

AfricArXiv is managed by a group of volunteers, who share any and all information about coordinating the initiative via their website. The rules for submitting preprints are also published online. Once a preprint is submitted, two or more volunteer moderators determine whether the work meets standards for reliability and relevancy. AfricArXiv relies mainly on donations and voluntary contributions.

monitor the status of biodiversity (such as the African Bird Atlas Project). Citizens who want to make government more transparent may also contribute to the development of data commons. This was the approach, in Senegal, of Open COVID19, which was born out of a desire to publish digitized information, such as the number of cases and their geolocations, that had previously been communicated only verbally, by the government. These initiatives are also useful for journalists, researchers, civil society, citizens in general, and policy makers. The IWACU Open Data initiative in Burundi, for example, was developed by a group of journalists to address the lack of access to official data, which was stored only in paper copies. Finally, numerous academic studies have illustrated the importance of open geospatial data for the allocation of aid by governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) (Grinberger et al. 2022).
BOX 5.4

Ushahidi

In 2007, violence erupted in Kenya in the wake of the Kenyan general election. A widespread media blackout prevented millions of Kenyans from accessing information about the situation in the country and from getting to safety. In a matter of days, bloggers and leading figures in the digital sphere decided to get together to build a platform to gather firsthand information from locals via SMS and the internet. More than 40,000 geolocated, time-stamped testimonies were shared on the platform. The platform served not only as an alert system for those in close proximity to the violence but also as a way to inform the rest of the world about how the situation was unfolding.

Ushahidi means "testimony" in Swahili. Ushahidi's purpose has since changed: the platform is now open to marginalized communities around the world. It is freely reusable and modifiable and is used in more than 160 countries. Some 50 million testimonies have been collected on the platform from people under threat of natural disasters, human rights violations, corruption, or harassment. These testimonies help to improve access to information, to make governments more transparent, and to better adapt government responses to crises.

Among the most active communities are contributors to the Syria Tracker, HarassMap, iWitness, Abaaraha, and Mapping Media Freedom projects. Though Ushahidi has an international team of more than 15 experts from seven African countries, it has adopted an open strategy that allows communities to participate not only in updating its platform but also in designing it and in writing user manuals. Maintenance of the Ushahidi platform is handled mainly by a nonprofit organization based in Kenya. The rules governing its management and use, particularly the data that are collected, are defined by the user communities. All that Ushahidi requires of these communities is that they respect the rules regarding personal data protection and privacy. Thanks to the publicity Ushahidi garnered in the wake of the violence in Kenya, it has received a great deal of financial support, in the form of donations and grants, from international public organizations, foundations, and private companies. Although the organization still relies in large part on this financial support, it has developed new sources of revenue by offering certain communities customization services and support for the deployment of its tool.

Free software

Because of the shared dependence on certain computer systems, a great deal of free software¹² is used around the world today by private companies, the public sector, and civil society. Companies that depend on this software also help develop it. Free software is particularly well represented in the sphere of servers and web applications. For example, the Apache HTTP Server is the most widely used software for web servers, just as WordPress is for websites and MySQL is for database management.
Several studies have pointed out the many positive externalities of free
software development for the economy and employment—namely, that it
makes local businesses more productive and fosters digital entrepreneurship
(Wachs et al. 2022). Some companies specialize in deploying free software or in
developing solutions tailored to the needs of customers. Digital services compa-
nies thus account for a large share of growth and employment in the ICT sector
(UNCTAD 2019). In the course of our research, we identified several examples
of free software—some of which were created in Africa, such as OpenMRS
.box 5.5—that are maintained and deployed by numerous service providers
on the continent.

*Open hardware commons and open standards and protocols commons*

In the course of our research, we identified several examples of open hardware
commons¹³ and open standards and protocols commons.¹⁴ First, these include

BOX 5.5

OpenMRS

OpenMRS is a software program developed in 2004 by several organizations working to improve care for patients with HIV in Kenya and Rwanda. It was originally designed as a generic medical record system that could handle all patient health information and deliver it in the form of summaries, reports, and data views that could make system users more efficient.

Before long, OpenMRS was being deployed in a host of contexts. It has developed
from just a handful of founding organizations into a global community based on the
principles of openness and sharing. It is used today in more than 40 countries and at
over 6,000 sites, making it possible to manage the medical records of nearly 16 million
patients. The community of contributors to OpenMRS is made up of small service com-
panies that deploy the software locally, international health care organizations, and
research institutions. Over the past 15 years, the number of contributors from the
Global South, and from Sub-Saharan Africa in particular, has increased significantly.
A growing number of companies that offer software customization and deployment
services are involved in updating the core software and in sharing new features with
the rest of the community.

OpenMRS is a nongovernmental organization (NGO) registered in the United States. The development of its software is carried out by "squads" of volunteer contributors. Community members can monitor the NGO's important technical and strategic decisions via committees. By constituting itself as a legal entity, OpenMRS is eligible to receive public funding. This kind of funding constitutes the bulk of its income, as it does not seek to develop services that could compete directly with the organizations that deploy and contribute to the development of its software.
community Wi-Fi networks (box 5.6). Access to affordable infrastructure and equipment remains a major barrier to the promotion of digital technologies. By making it possible to pool resources and costs, digital commons present an important opportunity in this context. Communities around the world have been able to establish community networks for internet access in remote areas that are not profitable for telecommunications operators. There are not many in Sub-Saharan Africa, however (Internet Society 2017b), even though the low income levels and the high cost of internet, equipment, and electricity in the region could, in theory, be a catalyst for their development. On the other hand,

BOX 5.6

Pamoja Net

Pamoja Net is a community Wi-Fi network established in 2016 by the nongovernmental organization (NGO) La Différence, on Idjwi Island in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The network helped several businesses and cooperatives, as well as more than 6,000 of the island's 300,000 inhabitants, get internet access. According to an evaluation conducted by the NGO, 98 percent of the network's new users feel that the project has "contributed to a positive change in their life, from a new-found ability to connect with family and friends to conducting educational research, making job applications, checking weather reports before fishing on Lake Kivu and saving money."ª The island's foremost cooperative, the coffee growers' cooperative, has been able to expand its business and find new international clients.

The primary users and contributors to the network are local businesses, which have agreed to fund the monthly connection cost of about US$800,000. Considering the costs of installation and individual subscriptions with a conventional internet service provider, sharing the cost of Wi-Fi saves these businesses money. They also help pay for the maintenance of the network, as well as that of a small kiosk, which allows all the island's inhabitants to benefit from the bandwidth after working hours. The kiosk is located at the center of the island's main market.

The network's governance is closely linked to the island's chiefdom, headed by the king. The king has set up various commissions to discuss public policy issues, including one commission that deals with communication and handles network issues. La Différence's teams meet with this commission once a week to evaluate the evolution of the network and discuss any problems. It was therefore possible to discuss the network's management rules with all stakeholders in advance. The fact that the network is part of the existing chiefdom system is seen by locals as a way of ensuring that the project belongs to the community and remains autonomous. While the network still relies on grants and donations to fund its operation costs, 60 percent of these costs are covered by local businesses. The funds needed to set up the network were raised by the NGO from international donors and philanthropists.

<footnote>a. https://www.la-difference.com/innovation-article-community-internet.</footnote>
there are several barriers to their development, including a lack of awareness of the benefits of better access to information, the limited development of certain technical skills, and the lack of regulatory frameworks conducive to community initiatives.

Similarly, many urban commons, such as fab labs (see chapter 4), provide shared access to different types of equipment, such as internet-connected computers for accessing services or 3D printers for industrial prototyping. These approaches, based on a collaborative, “DIY” ethos, promote local innovation through access to open-source designs.¹⁵ Many members of African fab labs helped design and produce health solutions in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

**The Different Communities Involved in Digital Commons: Dynamics of Collaboration and Participation**

The communities involved in digital commons, particularly free software ones, have identified four groups that are essential to making a resource sustainable.¹⁶ These are users, who have a use for commons; contributors, who help maintain or develop commons; administrators, who are responsible for the long-term organization of commons and who have management, exclusion, and alienation rights (see chapter 1); and funders, who help finance commons. We are concerned here with user and contributor communities located, either entirely or partially, in Sub-Saharan Africa. The very nature of digital commons, however, makes geographical belonging a thorny issue (box 5.7).

*African users of digital commons*

The use of digital commons has greatly increased throughout the world over the past 20 years. Sub-Saharan Africa is no exception, but it does have certain particularities.

The use of content commons, whether developed in Africa or abroad, remains lower overall in Sub-Saharan Africa than in the rest of the world, though the rates and methods of use vary from country to country. The reasons why people use them vary as well. For example, Africans who use Wikipedia tend to do so for work and learning, whereas people in industrialized countries tend to do so to check information (Lemmerich et al. 2019).

As platforms that make a great deal of data accessible are developed, and as the number of organizations and individuals with data science skills grows, the number of African users of data commons appears to be increasing. Open-data initiatives are largely driven by the media,¹⁷ NGOs, academics, and entrepreneurs in the social economy. Intermediary entities, such as NGOs and foundations, play an essential role in Sub-Saharan Africa's data ecosystem. They often train journalists, academics, and entrepreneurs to use data, and they may finance initiatives focused on certain technologies (e.g., artificial intelligence)
BOX 5.7

Challenges of Pinning Down Digital Commons Geographically

At first glance, it appears difficult to link digital commons to particular geographic locations. The vast majority of digital commons use free licenses, which allow them to benefit from the opportunity to scale up that being digital affords them. In theory, every developer in the world could help develop software registered under a free license. This increases the chances that the software will be developed and improved but also copied and used.

We should distinguish this kind of broad de jure use from de facto use. It is possible to study the communities that contribute to different software in order to assess how diverse they are, for example, in terms of geographical origin, gender, ethnicity, or religion. Several studies have pointed out the lack of diversity among contributors to certain commons, particularly the overrepresentation of North American and European men among people who write Wikipedia articles, including articles that relate to countries of the Global South. The Wikimedia Foundation itself has set up a diversity observatory. With respect to certain digital commons, such as the technical standards that govern the internet or the Web, the low participation of African contributors is striking. Just 0.26 percent of the contributions received by the Internet Engineering Task Force are African. a

There are digital commons whose user groups are truly global, such as VLC media player. But it is hard to find examples of communities with an even geographic distribution of contributors. Thus, with respect to free software, although digitization facilitates remote collaboration, the persistence of regional clusters suggests that geographic location plays a decisive role in the organization of contributions to an open-source project (Wachs et al. 2022).

Among those digital commons that are considered global, such as Wikipedia or OpenStreetMap, we also observe a high number of communities organized around specific resources: for example, communities of users of Wikipedia articles dedicated to one country or language or groups organized to contribute to the cartography of a country, region, or city. While these communities are a subset of the global community of contributors, they are nevertheless geographically located and organize themselves locally according to their particular needs.

a. https://researchictafrica.net/2022/06/13/mapping-african-digital-infrastructures-part-3-understanding-the-motivations-and-challenges-of-african-contributions-to-the-internet-standards-development/

or certain Sustainable Development Goals. This is true of projects supported by the Lacuna Fund (box 5.8) and by Outreachy, for example.

There are many users of free software in Sub-Saharan Africa, although there is a lack of data on how important free software is to African businesses. Nevertheless, our interviews confirm that the use of free software provides small businesses in the service sector and urban populations with easy
BOX 5.8

Lacuna Fund

The Lacuna Fund is a "collaborative effort to provide data scientists, researchers, and social entrepreneurs in low- and middle-income contexts globally with the resources they need to produce labeled datasets that address urgent problems in their communities."ª The fund was created specifically to address the needs of machine learning (the contemporary methods of artificial intelligence learning enabled by access to massive amounts of data). Even though artificial intelligence seems to present huge opportunities in the way of development, in Sub-Saharan Africa, these kinds of data are either nonexistent or of poor quality, or is even discriminatory (since the most marginalized populations are underrepresented).

The Lacuna Fund now includes the Rockefeller Foundation, Google.org, the International Development Research Centre, and the German Agency for International Cooperation. The fund puts out calls for thematic project proposals and awards grants to successful applicants. The data sets generated by these projects are "locally developed and owned, and they will be openly accessible to the international community while adhering to best practices regarding ethics and privacy."ᵇ

access to key services at a lower cost than proprietary solutions, which can be expensive to license. Respondents cited Linux-derived operating systems, in particular, but also the free office suite LibreOffice, text-editing tools (e.g., Scribus, FontForge), audio- and video-editing tools, and 3D-creation tools (e.g., Blender) in the creative industries sector. African information technology companies rely heavily on free software for web development but also on integrated management solutions for businesses, for example, for customer relations (e.g., CRM software).

Finally, we identified several examples of community Wi-Fi networks whose users are mainly people who live in rural areas, in marginalized communities.

*African contributors to digital commons*

The vast majority of African contributors to global commons such as Wikimedia or OpenStreetMap are young, and they either have a degree or are in the process of obtaining one. They tend to be from urban areas, and women are still underrepresented. Few contributors receive an income, even a partial one, for their participation. Most of them are students taking part in open-source projects as part of their studies or a job search.¹⁸ Many of them take part individually in civic engagement projects, particularly in the domain of government transparency (civic tech) or of open science. These projects, such as African Storybook, promote African languages and cultures through

<footnote>a. https://lacunafund.org/about/.</footnote>

<footnote>b. https://lacunafund.org/about/.</footnote>
content creation. Others aim to produce national intangible infrastructures, such as the Digital Umuganda project in Rwanda, which mobilizes the ancestral concept of “Umuganda” (engaging once a month in work for the collective good) to collectively develop artificial intelligence voice recognition applications in Kinyarwanda.

The share of African contributions to the global digital commons remains small, with a few exceptions. According to data from GitHub (the most popular open-source code repository), contributors who identified themselves as African accounted for just 2.3 percent of active contributors in 2021 (although one-third of contributors did not declare their geographical location). The share of contributions by African developers has nevertheless increased from 0.3 percent in 2010 to 2.3 percent in 2020. The Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa had more than 100,000 active contributors in 2021, and 2019 saw remarkable growth in the number of African projects filed on GitHub, particularly in the Arab Republic of Egypt, Kenya, and Nigeria. Some projects, such as Open Source Community Africa, see the continent as the place where the “next billion creators” will come from. Finally, the platform is also home to projects like “Made in Nigeria” and “Made in Africa.”

Large international foundations are seeking to enrich the content and data commons with more African contributions, sometimes with the support of international donors. For example, local associations affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation have been created in Sub-Saharan Africa to support the creation of content related to the countries that are the least well represented in the encyclopedia, both in the languages of these countries and by contributors that hail from them (map 5.1). They enable local communities to help build a diverse online cultural heritage. Campaigns such as Wiki Loves Africa, meanwhile, have greatly increased the number of freely reusable images from 55 countries across the continent. Images submitted between January 2016 and July 2021 have been viewed 787 million times,¹⁹ boosting the visibility and perceived value of Africa's heritage. Similarly, initiatives such as YouthMappers, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap, Open Cities, and OpenStreetMap Microgrants have established local communities of cartographers that have helped create important geographic databases in Sub-Saharan Africa (map 5.2). OpenStreetMap communities can be found in 65 percent of African countries. Moreover, many countries, while lacking organized communities, have active contributors.²⁰

*Administrators and financial sponsors of digital commons in Sub-Saharan Africa*

Funding models for African digital commons are often hybrid, combining donations, public subsidies, and market revenues. Relying on multiple sources
<figure><img src="image_16.png" /><figcaption>**Map 5.1** Presence in Africa of Associations Affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation</figcaption></figure>

Source: Original map using Khartis software and data from meta.wikimedia.org.

of funding is seen as a way to guarantee autonomy and financial stability, but it requires the maintenance of a community of financial sponsors, which implies a legal entity, regulations, a bank account, and a staff able to write grant applications and respond to invitations to tender. Before long, these teams start to play a critical role in managing the resource, and they must be skilled at managing and evaluating projects in order to meet the criteria set by backers. As a result, most of the digital commons that we identified are legally structured entities, and these are as likely to be located in Africa as in Europe or North America. There are few informal collectives in our sample.
<figure><img src="image_17.png" /><figcaption>**Map 5.2** Density of Contributions to OpenStreetMap in Africa</figcaption></figure>

Source: Map data copyrighted OpenStreetMap contributors (Open Data Commons Open Database License) and available from https://tyrasd.github.io/osm-node-density/#3/5.12/26.60/latest; image from © Martin Raifer, cc-by.

**Digital Commons: Opportunities and Challenges for African Development**

**Digital Commons: An Opportunity for African Development**

*Possibilities and capacity for innovation across a wide range of application areas*

Digital commons in Sub-Saharan Africa are represented in all development sectors. Their impact can be seen in both urban and rural settings, as well as in countries up and down the continent. First and foremost, they offer the private sector opportunities to cut costs, such as by using freely available images (Erickson et al. 2015). They also help to spread innovation. Any organization or company can access the resource and thus use it to invent new products and services. An open database, for example, can be used by any and all digital actors
in a country to develop software and applications. These resources may be key
technologies that open up the possibility for the development of applications
in a wide range of fields. Digital commons thus allow entrepreneurs around
the world to liberate themselves from dependence on technologies owned by
companies that are usually located in the Global North.

*Open digital infrastructure for an inclusive economy*

The digital revolution has allowed digital commons to reach unprecedented
scales.²¹ As a result, many digital commons have come to be recognized as
pieces of the immaterial infrastructure of systems that are now vital for digital
economy actors, just like roads and bridges in the physical world.²² Digital com-
mons are all the more interesting as infrastructure in that they are based on
modes of governance that involve multiple actors. This makes them less likely
to be dependent on a single actor (whether public or private) and guarantees
that access to the resource is inclusive.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, in the same way, the public and private sectors are
increasingly coming to recognize the role these communities play in terms
of cost sharing and innovation potential (box 5.9). Free software is playing a

BOX 5.9

WAZIHUB

WAZIHUB (“Open-Hub” in Swahili) is a project that seeks to promote African innova-
tion in the Internet of Things (IoT) and in Big Data. Launched in 2015, with funding
from the EU’s Horizon 2020, its goal is to develop open software and hardware to
enable African entrepreneurs to easily create solutions based on these technologies.
The project offers resources and end-to-end support. It provides a free development kit
for rapid prototyping of solutions that is based on free software and hardware. It also
offers free access to a cloud computing platform for developing custom applications
through an open interface. The project then provides access to capacity-building train-
ing for entrepreneurs and connects them with experts and researchers in the IoT field.
About 48 startups have used WAZIHUB’s technology to develop solutions. More than
2,000 people have used the project’s resources and attended its training sessions.
WAZIHUB works closely with innovation centers in countries across the continent.
WAZIHUB’s technology project is fully open source and is being developed on GitHub
with a small community of developers. The code has already been cloned several times
by other communities.

The WAZIHUB project is coordinated by the Bruno Kessler Foundation, which is based in Italy. The consortium comprises seven partners from four African countries (Burkina Faso, Ghana, Senegal, and Togo) and five partners from four European countries (France, Germany, Italy, and Portugal). It brings together developers, technology experts, and African companies. It is largely publicly funded.
growing role in the public health sector, for example. In Lesotho, the govern-
ment has played a leading role in the use and development of OpenStreetMap
for urban and rural planning programs.²³ Similarly, the African software devel-
opment company Andela is a major contributor to the open-source projects
that its business relies on, in the belief that this contributes to the training and
international reputation of its employees.

Commons are also of interest to governments because solutions that were initially developed to meet local needs have been able to be deployed throughout the world. An example of this is the OpenMRS medical record system (box 5.5). This observation has helped generate new international collaborations for the development and maintenance of shared digital infrastructure, such as GovStack.

*Communities of practice that act as socioeconomic connectors*

Through the idea of shared resources (e.g., knowledge, information, equipment, space), digital commons are at the center of collaboration and empowerment dynamics that act as socioeconomic connectors. They offer the advantage of mixing the formal and informal sectors, the public sector with the private, industries and universities, expertise and practice, urban and rural milieux, or the African diaspora with countries of origin.

African digital commons are organized into networks by type of resource, notably at the pan-African and international levels. AfricaOSH (Africa Open Science Hardware), for example, is one of the most dynamic networks of fab labs in Africa. In contrast to interventions that are based essentially on providing digital resources developed in the Global North, these African networks make it possible to take into account all the needs and social structures at work in the production and reception of a digital resource, beyond the nature of the resource itself. Knowledge, for example, is understood as the result of a learning process—and therefore of a social process—and not as merely the digital formalization of information.

Finally, digital commons are the fruit of cooperative efforts between citizens
from different countries and backgrounds, sometimes on a global scale. They
are not based on a vertical transfer of knowledge but rather on mutual learning
through cocreation. As a result, they pave the way for peer-to-peer partnerships
that can create truly new capacities for all parties involved.²⁴

**Challenges to Developing the Potential of Digital Commons**

Whether African digital commons contribute to sustainable local develop-
ment is no longer in question, but it would be naive to think that they have
no obstacles to overcome. Digital commons, like digital entrepreneurs, are
faced first and foremost with Africa's traditional infrastructural challenges
(i.e., electricity, connectivity, etc.). Low literacy rates and inequality of access
to digital technologies remain barriers to the deployment of digital commons. For example, a country's number of active contributors to Wikipedia is cor- related with its Human Development Index (Graham, De Sabbata, and Zook 2015). The relative lack of community Wi-Fi in Sub-Saharan Africa can also be explained by the lack of awareness of the benefits of better access to information and the limited development of certain technical skills (Internet Society 2017a). However, digital commons also face unique challenges.

***Digital commons are not a priority in national policies***

Digital strategies in Africa are mostly focused on bringing economic activity into the formal sector and strengthening the state at the expense of African communi- ties. As a result, digital commons in Sub-Saharan Africa are developing on fragile ground. In addition to a lack of institutional support, this is because governments, public agencies, and large- and medium-sized companies are not fully aware of the potential of digital commons. It may also be a result of the strategic priori- ties that have guided African public policies on digital technologies for several decades. These tend to be focused on developing connectivity, creating businesses and jobs in the ICT sector, and digitizing public services. These strategic priorities seek to formalize economic activity and strengthen states by rolling out digital civil registries, for example, or improving tax collection systems, such as through the introduction of a value-added tax. Even when digital commons initiatives flourish, they can run up against other political and economic challenges. In 2013, for example, the Central Bank of Kenya filed a lawsuit against members of the foundation Grassroots Economics (box 5.10), which had been involved in devel- oping the Bangla-Pesa complementary currency.

***Limited availability of funding and economic dependence on international partners***

The financial support made available to digital commons often comes in the form of microgrants for activities related to specific projects or campaigns. This can be explained by three factors: the difficulty of estimating or measuring the value of a nonmarket, intangible resource; uncertainties about how much funding is actually needed; and a lack of information about how the developed resources might be reused. Developing a digital commons is not without risk. It is also harder to offer investors collateral or financial guaranties, since there are not usually any assets to seize if a project fails.

As a result, transitioning from an ad hoc collective that collaborates on a specific project to a community that actively manages a sustainable resource over time is not easy for many emerging civil society initiatives. Doing so requires that committed communities be able to connect with donors or international funders in order to benefit from substantial and long-term funding (box 5.11). For example, Tanzania has, with the support
BOX 5.10

Grassroots Economics

Grassroots Economics is a nonprofit foundation that aims to foster economic development by introducing local, inclusive complementary currencies. It grew out of marginalized communities in Kenya. Its first complementary-currency project, Bangla-Pesa, was implemented in 2013, in a slum on the outskirts of Mombasa called Bangladesh. The foundation is now developing complementary-currency projects in 45 localities in Kenya and 2 localities in South Africa. Its goal is to roll out such currencies across the globe.

The complementary currencies developed by Grassroots Economics function as vouchers or interest-free credit obligations. The vouchers have value because local small businesses and consumers treat them as money. The community can set its own rules for issuing and distributing the currency. According to evaluations of the foundation's programs, introducing these currencies as a complement to national currencies has created a stable medium of exchange for local development by reducing dependence on external markets and liquidity. As a result of the development of this new local financial service, the communities that have participated in these programs have seen an increase in trade, investment, and employment. The foundation itself describes the agreements made between members of the various communities as "economic commons."

The foundation has created the Grassroots Economic Commons License, an open license that defines the rights and obligations of the communities involved. It supports communities in using this license and in adapting resources and tools to their needs. Its activities are funded by grants and donations, mainly from donors and nongovernmental organizations that support development programs with a similar approach and suite of services as the foundation.

of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and the World Bank, become one of the African countries with the largest number of buildings mapped on OpenStreetMap.²⁵

*Proprietary or open models? A dilemma for African contributors to digital commons*

Few digital-innovation spaces emphasize unorthodox systems of intellectual property. Apart from fab labs, most African digital commons are not consciously engaged in promoting a heterodox system of entrepreneurship, nor describe themselves as commons (notable exceptions include AfricArXiv and Laws.Africa).

Digital commons in Sub-Saharan Africa are usually formed in response to a specific problem. The values of openness, shared governance, or even
BOX 5.11

Energypedia

Energypedia was initially designed as an internal tool for the knowledge management of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ) (German Agency for International Cooperation) energy projects. Interest from external partners led GIZ, in 2010, to make the wiki public and freely accessible. In 2012, the Energypedia project was spun off into an independent nongovernmental organization (NGO).

Today, Energypedia is a wiki platform for exchanging knowledge about renewable energy, energy access, and energy efficiency in developing countries. In 2021, it had more than 5,000 articles, which were consulted nearly 2 million times around the world that year. It now receives close to 90,000 monthly visits from 212 different countries. In 2021, 12,000 users were registered, mostly in the Global South. According to a 2019 survey of its users, more than half of the users identified themselves as being based in Africa. A significant number of contributors work for NGOs or in the public or private sector. The platform never pays contributors directly. On the other hand, some employers pay for writing articles.

Energypedia is an NGO based in Germany, with a small, mostly part-time team. These employees have set rules of conduct for contributors, including bans on promoting fossil or nuclear energy and on advertisements for particular business solutions. The team also maintains the writing and organizational standards of the wiki's articles, though it does not verify the quality of the content in detail. Contributors are therefore free to contribute to the wiki and submit ideas for strategic action, but they do not directly influence the NGO's direction.

Energypedia is largely publicly funded, though it does also receive donations from a limited number of individuals. The public funds are mostly grants from development agencies. A private company, Energypedia Consult, was founded in 2012. It develops consulting services for knowledge management and the evaluation of energy programs. Its profits go to the NGO. That money helps cover some recurring costs, such as the cost of maintaining the wiki, but not the platform's overall costs.

simply collaboration are grafted onto the project over time and often out of necessity, such as when a problem's solution involves mobilizing a community. Young entrepreneurs point out that community members with low incomes cannot afford to invest in long-term collective projects; they often prefer to shift to proprietary systems that make it possible to monetize their investments more quickly. For young entrepreneurs, then, commons are one of several organizational forms to be compared with a pragmatic eye. Commons tend to be favored when it comes to developing projects within and with a community (such as valorizing a region's cultural heritage or a linguistic space), which must fulfill not only economic but also social or environmental objectives.
Africans display a variety of motivations for participating in a digital commons. Most young entrepreneurs do so to acquire skills that may not be taught at universities, to increase their chances of finding a job, or to start their own business in places where formal jobs may be hard to come by.²⁶ For the most active members of these communities, who take on organizational roles, participating in commons can be a way of transitioning into the private sector or international organizations.

Participation in digital commons can therefore be entirely consistent with entrepreneurship; it may even be beneficial for it. Many commons administrators and contributors alternate between their contributory and private activities. Finally, the backgrounds and trajectories of digital commons contributors largely overlap with those of digital entrepreneurs.

### Digital commons at risk of being grabbed

Integrating African digital commons into one's professional or entrepreneurial path can encourage the misappropriation of resources for private ends. This raises the question of which modes of governance and economic models are best suited to preventing individual entrepreneurs from diverting common resources for personal use. The same risk exists with respect to international actors, who may use community-developed local resources to develop their services.

In order to account for these risks, some commons have resorted to licenses that limit the use of the resource more strictly. Others—such as the e-Boda Co-op project, in Tanzania (box 5.12)—are developing cooperative models to ensure that common resources are maintained via democratic methods of decision-making.

## Conclusion

Because they promote a more equitable distribution of the capacity for innovation and the conditions for competition, digital commons are potential catalysts for sustainable development in Sub-Saharan Africa. They allow everyone to access information, services, and tools that foster value creation at the local level. They can be seen as the intangible infrastructure of a knowledge-based economy. Finally, with communities of practice collaborating on concrete projects, digital commons act as socioeconomic connectors and drivers of cooperative learning.

In this respect, digital commons constitute a credible alternative to a model of digital entrepreneurship based on exponential growth and proprietary models that lead to the majority of wealth created in the digital economy being concentrated in the hands of a few quasi-monopolistic actors. This latter model
## e-Boda Co-op in Tanzania

The e-Boda Co-op (electric boda-boda cooperative) project aims to establish worker-owned electric transportation cooperatives to empower communities to take part in the production, operation, and benefits of mobility services. It focuses on boda-boda motorcycles. The purpose of using a cooperative model is to enable local communities to derive as much of the added economic, social, and environmental value as possible from transportation and related services. Community members not only help design, produce, and maintain the electric motorcycles but also use the fleet of motorcycles to provide mobility services and the digital platform to book trips, as well as for deliveries and rentals.

The co-op is currently developing a pilot project in Tanzania's Tanga region. The goal of the project is to improve boda-boda services in three ways:

* Motorcycles with internal combustion engines will be replaced by electric motorcycles with interchangeable batteries, which will be assembled on site. This technical development will not only improve local air quality and reduce noise but also reduce the cost of purchasing vehicles. Drivers will also be trained to repair the motorcycles.

* A drivers' cooperative will be created that will share the fleet of electric motorcycles and the tools to maintain them.

* A digital platform and open-source application (based on an existing open-source resource) will be developed to make it easier to order a taxi.

The project is based on an original model of financing cooperatives through a loan, which the newly created boda-boda drivers' cooperative will be able to take out from an existing cooperative (in this case, from Robotech Labs) and repay at a low rate of interest after the first three years of operation. This model was born out of a collaboration among four organizations, two Tanzanian (Robotech Labs and Tanzania Open Innovation Organization), one Chinese (Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab), and one French (Fabrique des Mobilités, or FabMob).

currently dominates the discourses and strategies of international organizations and African states, but it has been beset by challenges at the local and international levels, as Friederici, Wahome, and Graham (2020) demonstrate. This same study also notes that, the rhetoric notwithstanding, African digital entrepreneurship today tends to be more focused on incremental innovations for local or regional markets and is associated with slow, linear growth.
A more detailed analysis of digital commons in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly of the backgrounds and expectations of African contributors, has shown that the majority of commons participants do not see themselves as developing an alternative model. In this respect, and as is the case for many fab labs, as well (see chapter 4), African participants do not take the militant positions of their European and North American counterparts. Whether they are acting individually or collectively, they do so pragmatically, combining a commons approach with a more traditional model of entrepreneurship.

Although this combination may entail certain risks (such as the grabbing of common resources), it is seen by digital commons stakeholders themselves as an opportunity for Africa. It represents an additional opportunity for Africans who want to live and work in ways that ensure that the human communities and ecosystems that they are a part of can both be sustained. Despite structural challenges, it offers new routes for development and new multistakeholder partnerships capable of handling the realities, needs, and solutions endogenous to Africa.

## Notes

1. This research was carried out in 2022 with financing from the Agence française de développement (AFD) (French Development Agency). The data can be accessed and downloaded in their entirety on Airtable at https://airtable.com/shrm Q4b9y6GSd2Tnn/tblnZ1YqqelIQJXx3. The Airtable tool can be used to filter and navigate through a collaborative catalogue. Users can add to the catalogue using an online form.

2. Data: Statistics (itu.int).

3. Unstructured Supplementary Service Data is a feature that allows the exchange of information over GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), without internet access.

4. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.ZS.

5. Different terms may be used, but they all agree that access to digital resources, guaranteed by free licenses, offers opportunities for sustainable development. More specifically, in the literature, the notion of “open resources” refers to issues regarding the free circulation of information and knowledge, transparency, and support for innovation. The concept of “digital public property” refers to issues of resource sharing, efficiency, participation in the Sustainable Development Goals, and international cooperation. The use of the notion of “global digital public property” evokes the need for governments to share responsibility for protecting and even managing these resources. The concept of “digital commons” brings with it the issues of building capacity through contribution, the distribution of value creation, and developing structures that serve as alternatives to a centralized digital economy.

6. “Nonrivalrous goods” refers to those goods that can be used by an individual or group of individuals without having an effect on the supply left for other individuals.
7. Content commons catalogued in Sub-Saharan Africa: African Storybook, AfricArXiv, AgShare Planning and Pilot Project, AirGéo, Arduino, Audiopedia, Appropedia, Beautiful Trouble, BSF Thema, Energypedia, FLOSS Manuals, Ethnos Project, Grainothèque, HarassMap, Initiatives Open COVID19 Sénégal, Kiwix, Laws.Africa, Livrescolaire.fr, Local Open GovLab, Open Food Network, Precious Plastic, Project Gutenberg, Public Lab, SEOSAW, UCT Knowledge Co-op, WAZIUP Open Source IoT and Cloud platform, WeFarm, WikiFundi, Wiki Kouman, Wikimedia Community User Group Côte d'Ivoire, WikiSigns, and Wikiversité.

8. https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read/.

9. https://www.unesco.org/en/communication-information/open-solutions/open-educational-resources.

10. Translator's note: Our translation. Unless otherwise stated, all translations of cited foreign language material are our own.

11. Data commons catalogued in Sub-Saharan Africa: AfterFibre, Africa GeoPortal, Africa Open DEAL, African Bird Atlas Project, AirGéo, Common Voice Kinyarwanda, Data Transport, DigitalTransport4Africa, Ethnos Project, GBIF, Global Open Facility Registry (GOFR), Grainothèque, GreenAlert, Hand-in-Hand geospatial data platform, HarassMap, Initiatives Open COVID19 Sénégal, IWACU Open Data, Laws.Africa, Local Open GovLab, Masakhane, openAFRICA, Open Food Facts, Open Food Network, Open Schools Kenya, OpenStreetMap, OpenUp, Sénégal Ouvert, SEOSAW, Trufi, and Ushahidi.

12. Software commons catalogued in Sub-Saharan Africa: Apache Fineract, Arduino, Bisa Health Application, Code for Senegal, Community Exchange Systems Ltd, Data Transport, echOpen Foundation, Emmabuntüs, Gitcoin, Grassroots Economics, Hand-in-Hand geospatial data platform, Initiatives Open COVID19 Sénégal, Junebug, Kiwix, Linguere Fablab, Local Open GovLab, Masakhane, Mojaloop, Molo, MomConnect, Nubian VR, OLIP (Offline Internet Platform), Open CRVS, Open Djeliba, Open Food Network, OpenHMIS, OpenMRS, Open Robotics, Open-Sankoré, OpenSRP, OpenUp, Platform, Precious Plastic, Raspberry Pi, SatNOGS, SmartElect, SORMAS, Trufi, Ushahidi, VideoLAN, WAZIUP Open Source IoT and Cloud platform, WeFarm, and WikiFundi.

13. Hardware commons catalogued in Sub-Saharan Africa: Arduino, echOpen Foundation, Initiatives Open COVID19 Sénégal, Linguere Fablab, LowTechLab, My Human Kit, Open Food Network, Open Source Ecology, Open Source Medical Supplies (OSMS), Precious Plastic, Raspberry Pi, and WAZIUP Open Source IoT and Cloud platform.

14. Protocols and standards commons catalogued in Sub-Saharan Africa: AFRINIC's Resource Certification Program (RPKI), Akoma Ntoso, Arduino, Code for Senegal, Gitcoin, Local Open GovLab, and SEOSAW.

15. https://openair.africa/africas-maker-movement-an-overview-of-ongoing-research/.

16. https://sustainoss.org/assets/pdf/SustainOSS-west-2017-report.pdf.

17. https://archive.uneca.org/publications/africa-data-revolution-report-2018.

18. https://researchictafrica.net/2022/05/30/mapping-african-digital-infrastructures-a-qualitative-analysis-of-open-source-contributions/.

19. https://www.wikiinafrica.org/project/wiki-loves-africa/.
20. https://www.hotosm.org/updates/the-state-of-openstreetmap-in-africa/.

21. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics.

22. https://www.fordfoundation.org/work/learning/research-reports/roads-and-bridges-the-unseen-labor-behind-our-digital-infrastructure/.

23. https://medium.com/@kateregga1/the-state-of-openstreetmap-in-africa-223ecadd5556.

24. https://www.academia.edu/8235120/Peer-to-Peer_Networks_for_Knowledge_Sharing_in_International_Development_Cooperation.

25. https://medium.com/@kateregga1/the-state-of-openstreetmap-in-africa-223ecadd5556.

26. https://researchictafrica.net/2022/05/30/mapping-african-digital-infrastructures-a-qualitative-analysis-of-open-source-contributions/.

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<figure><img src="image_18.png" /></figure>
Chapter 6

# Commons, General Interest, and Public Policy: Issues for the State in Sub-Saharan Africa

Benjamin Coriat, Mamoudou Gazibo, and Stéphanie Leyronas

## Introduction

In its 2017 World Development Report, *Governance and the Law*, the World Bank (2017) emphasized the fundamental role that institutions and governance have to play and, more generally, the historical trajectory of states and their relationships with society at large. Previous chapters in this book have identified a diverse range of African commons, which can be found in a variety of fields (natural resource management, housing, services of general interest, information resource management). The objective of this chapter is therefore to examine the contribution made by commons to public policy in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The hypothesis that commons in Africa can constitute sustainable actors in the formulation of collective action problems and the implementation of local solutions necessarily implies calling the state and the institutional contexts within which the activity of commons will take place into question. Indeed, whether one is interested in land-based commons (chapter 2), urban commons (chapter 4), or digital commons (chapter 5), it is often the issues of “palliative” (Olivier de Sardan 2021) or “supplementary” (Holder 2021) service provision, as well as opposition to and collaboration with the state, that are at the heart of the debate. The place of commons in public policy is thus influenced by the nature of the state, which in turn determines the nature of public policy and the type of interactions between the actors involved. To better understand this relationship, the first section reviews the different processes of state-building in Sub-Saharan Africa, the way in which they influence the implementation of public policy, and how this relates to commons.
In the second section, we firmly adopt the perspective of the state (including its constituent parts as well as municipal governments in contexts of decentralization) and the functions it can perform to contribute to securing the existence of commons, or even to their growth and deployment. There are multiple theoretical proposals on the subject (Bollier 2014; Hess and Ostrom 2006; Picavet et al. 2021), but their applicability remains to be demonstrated. The approach proposed here is therefore pragmatic and consists of drawing on the various different contexts and possible relationships between the state and commons as demonstrated in the previous empirical chapters. Despite their apparently universal nature, they can only be understood through a context-sensitive approach to both the state and commons. This analysis also brings to light three types of potential risks stemming from the adoption of an assertive relationship between the state and commons, which we detail in the third section: the risk of altering commons; the risk of instrumentalizing, assimilating, or even capturing commons; and the risk of shifting the state's responsibilities onto commons.

The fourth and final section is intended as a modest overview of the key issues in public policy. It examines the contribution of commons to the construction of distinctive trajectories for African states, breaking with the institutional inflexibility and inefficiency described in the first section. It also discusses the contribution of commons to the realization of economic and social rights, at the service of the general interest and democratic processes.

## Historical Trajectories of States and Public Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa

This first section emphasizes that governance in Sub-Saharan Africa is characterized by major institutional weaknesses (Gazibo 2010), a type of “limited statehood” (Risse and Lehmkuhl 2006), the strong presence of international actors (Devarajan, Dollar, and Holmgren 2002; Lavigne Delville 2011; Olivier de Sardan 2021), and, generally, little room for maneuver being granted to social actors (Darbon and Provini 2018). This allows us to extend the frameworks provided by institutional economics that we have used extensively in the previous empirical chapters, drawing on work in development anthropology, political science, and the political sociology of public policy.

### Some Specific Features of African States

An important contribution to the study of public policy is to seek to provide context for its forms, issues, and actors (Payre and Pollet 2013). This is particularly crucial in Africa, where, because of its historical trajectory (Mbembe 2001), the state is a conceptual category and a complex entity that in many ways does not conform to the Weberian model that serves as a reference for the bulk
of public policy analysis. The issue here is neither the controversy surrounding
whether the state existed in precolonial Africa or whether Africans are capable
of producing the state (Bourmaud 1997), nor that of drawing “dubious compari-
sons between historical trajectories” (Mbembe 2001, 11). It is simply a matter
of considering the state as a historically situated (European) political entity, one
that has replaced endogenous political forms in Africa, and then observing the
ways in which it has been constructed and perceived there.

In the precolonial period, many African societies functioned essentially
on the basis of collective modes of organization. It is true that African societ-
ies were varied, some of them instituting powerful and centralizing bureau-
cratic empires such as those of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai (Ki-Zerbo 1972).
But many of them were suspicious of the institutionalization of power, which
was seen as an attack on equality (Clastres 1974), and the mode of manage-
ment was often described by anthropologists as “ad hoc” or “ordered anar-
chy” (Fortes and Evans-Pritchard 1940). It is for this reason that Bourmaud
(1997, 16) argues that “the ideal of self-management seems to have been
realized” (box 6.1).

BOX 6.1

Community and Cooperation in Certain Precolonial
African Societies

"Many [precolonial] African societies lack rulers in the sense that they do not have individuals whose exclusive function is to coordinate the activity of the group's constituent elements. Among the Boshimans and Mbuti studied by Turnbull [1983], there is no particular person in charge. Cooperation is ensured through everyone's adherence to the group's norms and values, without the need for a specific source of authority to enforce them. In fact, the imperative to cooperate is deeply internalized, because its acceptance guarantees the economic survival of the group. When an individual transgresses the code that governs this collective understanding, he is banished from society. His reintegration can take place once his fault has been publicly acknowledged. The whole social system thus tends toward the maintenance of an almost homeostatic harmony that requires reconciliation. In this context, power is not incorporated into a specific institution, whether individual or collective, but is instead a matter of a 'diffuse power' [Balandier 2013], thanks to which the group can overcome its internal tensions. However, social control does not operate in a totally mechanical and spontaneous way. The formalization of misconduct involves the use of a particular procedure that consists of bringing the whole group together, thus stigmatizing the deviant behavior. It is the whole community that constitutes itself as a deliberative body in order to perpetuate its threatened internal order. Power is in fact held by the whole group, which exercises it when social control has proved to be lacking" (Bourmaud 1997, 15-16).
The colonial process erased these differences by superimposing the European state on all societies. After independence, this logic of statehood followed four main stages that were not very conducive to the institutionalization of a culture of collectively producing public policy (with a few exceptions, such as in the case of Botswana). The first two stages consisted of, first, the “concentration of power” under the pretext of consolidating states through policies such as the establishment of single parties and the trusteeship of state and nonstate organizations and, second, the “development of power” through the establishment of bureaucracies, coercive apparatuses, and legislation. During these two phases from the 1960s to the 1970s, the autonomy of social groups and associations was reduced to a minimum (Chazan et al. 1999, 46–62). The third phase covers the 1980s, which saw the contraction of state ambitions in terms of societal penetration and redistribution due to the economic crisis and the beginning of the implementation of structural adjustment programs driven by international financial institutions (Chazan et al. 1999, 65–68). This is the period described by phrases such as “politics from the bottom up” or “popular modes of political action,” during which society, thought to be totally dominated, managed to “poach” the state (Bayart, Mbembe, and Toul labor 1992). It saw the beginning of a revival of social organizations and a burgeoning of initiatives emanating from groups abandoned by the state, whether to challenge, bypass, or supplant it. Many of these organizations can easily be likened to commons when they are involved, for example, in the repair of schools, the construction of dikes, or the management of wells that are no longer maintained by the public authorities. Finally, in the fourth stage, which began in the 1990s as a result of political openness and democratization initiatives (Gazibo 2005, 2019; Ndulo and Gazibo 2016), we witnessed an increase in the complexity of state-society relations with the proliferation of national and local organizations coexisting with public bodies (Gazibo 2007), all interacting with and depending on external donors and subject to the logic of liberalization and the market.

African states place themselves both in continuity and in rupture with their colonial past. On the whole, they are still reproducing characteristics and modes of functioning resulting from the colonial and authoritarian history of the 1960s to 1990s. On the other hand, they no longer have a monopoly on public space because of the combination of internal constraints (political and associative pluralism) and external constraints (economic dependence, the influence of external actors and market logic). Under these conditions, commons play a substitutive role alongside other actors (Olivier de Sardan 2022) in a fragmented public sector in which the state is no longer the sole guarantor of the public interest, without, however, completely breaking away from the approaches that have been inherited from its past. As explained in the next section, this situation opens up the possibility for different types of relationships between the state and commons today.
States Whose Characteristics Are Generally Unfavorable to the
Development of Commons

Four main characteristics of African states merit attention from the perspective of a commons' analysis.

In the first instance, states in Africa are, from a sociogenetic point of view, structures that are alien to their societies and have been imposed on them as a result of domination. Because of this, this imported structure tends to function in a way (Badie 1992) that is not inclined to base itself on (or create) a political system that is in harmony with its society. The colonial state, which completely reorganized space, social relations, modes of production, and the relationship to power in Africa, was synonymous with violence and control, not legitimacy (Young 1997). Moreover, the postcolonial state inherited most of the features of its predecessor. In most cases, contemporary states have retained the “authoritarian principle” (Mbembe 1988) and the technologies of social domination. At best, one can speak of a precarious balance between state and society, resulting in some moments of total immersion of society in the state and other moments of relative autonomy of social groups (Chazan et al. 1999). Faced with these processes of domination, actors develop principles of action based on cunning, misappropriation, and reinterpretation that reveal major gaps between official norms and the actual behavior of civil servants and the public alike (Olivier de Sardan 1995). While attempts at democratization in the 1990s opened up public space and curbed this attempt at domination, they did not fundamentally alter the situation (Cheeseman 2019; Gazibo 2019; Lynch and VonDoepp 2019).

Second, very soon after independence, African states were patrimonial-
ized under the leadership of elites through the private monopolization of
public property (Médard 1991b). The state is an organizational complex
driven by actors and organizations (Levi 2002), which attempt to maximize
their interests according to various opportunities and constraints. Here there
is a profit motive, but also a particular type of redistribution that serves to
buy the loyalty of actors that are crucial for the survival of the regimes in
place (Van de Walle 2003). Patrimonialism involves corruption within the
state, but also within nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) whose integ-
rity is increasingly being called into question (May 2016). This predatory
logic is present at all levels, from the distribution of positions to the capture
of rents of all kinds (Hibou 2009), such as oil in Nigeria, for example (Porter
and Watts 2017).

Third, African states tend to lack the capacity to extract and redistribute resources to the population. These shortcomings are themselves the result of both the structural weakness of states that have always had difficulty controlling their territory (Herbst 2000) and the patrimonial management of the available resources as described above (Bach and Gazibo 2011; Médard 1991a).
These empirical weaknesses have led some authors to express surprise that African states still manage to survive. This immediately led them to point to external factors: according to them, it is to international law and the principle of sovereignty, which de facto protects states, that they owe their survival (Jackson and Rosberg 1982). Certain authors have seen in this either the possibility of “the defeat of the state as the general technology of domination” (Mbembe 2000, 79) or that of “the emergence of new political actors in the public sphere, the proliferation of unexpected social rationalities, and the implementation of novel technologies and apparatuses, whose purpose is to control individual conduct and to make possible new modes of constituting private property and inequality” (Mbembe 2000). Others have spoken of a phenomenon of “offloading” (Hibou 1999), highlighting the state’s disengagement from some of its regalian functions that are then left for the voluntary sector to take over. In both cases, we see the emergence of a form of indirect government.

Fourth, states are outward-facing in the dual sense of being entities whose policies are very often designed from the outside by international financial institutions and whose budgets are also financed in large part by bilateral and multilateral funders. As a result, they are subject to all kinds of external impacts. There are several interpretations of the aid issue in relation to public policy, development, and political regimes. The most critical of these argue that “aid kills” development opportunities and does not improve the lives of ordinary people in Africa (Moyo and Ferguson 2010) and elsewhere (Erler 1987). Other authors argue that it is when aid becomes too entrenched that we enter a situation of dependency with negative effects (Clemens et al. 2012). In most cases, African states belong to this state of affairs. In many of them, elites have developed a genuine policy of permanent crisis in order to capture international aid (Bienen and Van de Walle 1991).

In this context, it may be in the interest of commons to stay away from the state, as the latter may have adopted a posture of opposition or even pre-dation. Chapter 2 recalls, for example, how colonization was the source of profound changes in land tenure systems imposed by administrations, or how the state can also play the role of intermediary vis-à-vis international actors in order to exploit natural resources in an industrial manner, thus weakening land-based commons. On another note, chapter 5 shows that thriving digital commons initiatives can run up against certain political and economic realities, as revealed in 2013 by the Central Bank of Kenya's complaint against members of the foundation Grassroots Economics, which had participated in the development of the Bangla-Pesa complementary currency. However, this inhibiting influence of the state over commons is not a foregone conclusion. Even though postcolonial African states are, on the whole, ill-disposed toward commons, this does not mean that it is impossible for the state to act constructively with commons.
# Securing and Promoting the Development of Commons: What Is the Role of the State?

The empirical chapters of this book have shown that many commons that are developing in Sub-Saharan Africa have expectations of their governments, both to secure their existence and to receive help in promoting their growth and development. There are a wide variety of situations and possible relationships between the state (understood as the state and its constituent parts or municipal governments, depending on the circumstances of decentralization) and commons (Dongier et al. 2002). Within the framework of its functions, attributes, and prerogatives, the state can support commons with varying degrees of assertiveness as a facilitator or as a contributor.

## The State as a Facilitator

In the exercise of its regalian, legislative, and regulatory functions, the state can take measures that provide commons, as well as other economic and social actors, with material or immaterial resources. Despite the characteristics described in the previous section that render the state ill-disposed toward commons, the establishment of bureaucracies, coercive apparatuses, and legislation by states in the aftermath of independence had developmental ambitions, even if this process incorporated nonstate organizations rather than empowering them. In the absence of a targeted initiative to support commons or related social experiments, it plays a “facilitating” role. These facilitative and institutional functions are central to Ostrom’s work and that of theorists who have expanded upon her insights (Benkler 2013; Rose 1986) (box 6.2).

The state can thus provide information resources (e.g., data, open archives and maps, public Wi-Fi, open digital libraries) or material resources (e.g., free and open access seeds, training in agricultural techniques). Commons can make use of these resources just like other economic and social actors. The African Union's digital transformation strategy is very much along these lines (see chapter 5): it emphasizes free educational resources, open data, open access to research results, and the use of open norms and standards (African Union 2020). When the state creates the conditions for the worldwide content and data commons to be enhanced by a greater number of African contributions, possibly with support from international donors (see the example of OpenStreetMap in Tanzania described in chapter 5), it is working to provide intangible resources that commons can tap into.

Through regulatory provisions, the state can also guarantee universal access to these resources or even be an institutor by creating ad hoc structures that provide these resources.¹ Its regulatory activity can also create the legal and legislative conditions for the emergence of new commons. This is the case, for example, for the housing cooperatives presented in chapter 3. The formation of
BOX 6.2

Open Commons

Following Ostrom's work, Rose (1986) and Benkler (2013) have conducted work on the so-called open commons in which public regulation, which is in charge of ensuring the "open" character of commons, occupies a central place. Based on an investigation conducted in the nineteenth century, Rose (1986) highlights that, under the influence of common law, jurisprudence introduced into American legislation the idea that there are objects that are "inherently public property." These are essentially roads, public squares, and waterways. Regardless of who the identifiable or actual "owner" is, no easement that excludes their use by individuals (private or professional) is allowed, and the rights of use are recognized as belonging to a large "unorganized public." Hence Rose's assertion that commons are a form that promotes harmonious social development. Benkler (2013) continues in this vein, adding other "tangible" goods (bridges, sidewalks, highways) and "intangible" goods (computer protocols, unlicensed radio spectrum bands, shared standards). With open commons, it is therefore a question of making open resources available to the whole of society. It is the state that is responsible for guaranteeing the existence and integrity of these resources, as well as universal access to them, through a set of appropriate regulations.

these cooperatives has been possible in Burkina Faso since the 2008 law on real estate development and in Senegal since Law no. 1983/07 of 1983 on the general status of cooperatives. Another example is that of groundwater management, where the state can create regulatory and economic tools (taxes, licenses, and quotas, for example) on which user communities can base (with some adaptations) the definition of the rights and obligations of each party (Dumont et al. 2021). This is where the state can reliably draw on endogenous and external norms that are favorable to commons instead of acting, as is often the case, as a mere receptacle for norms that are not necessarily beneficial and that are issued by external actors as described in the previous section.

The State as a Contributor

The state can assume functions beyond those identified above by positioning itself as a “contributor,” breaking with both the “offloading”-based approach and the temptation toward unrestricted domination described in the previous section. In this configuration, it enters into a direct relationship with commons. This scenario assumes that the state recognizes that commons create sustainable alternatives and that it provides them with elements of security so that they can maintain themselves in the long term and transform the initial experimental approach into a permanent one. It is based on mutual social and economic trust and assumes a mutual understanding of the limits of each party. Some African
commons therefore have a strong demand for increased interaction with the state, emphasizing the inspirational nature of their initiatives for public actors. This is the case, for example, with African urban commons (Ishyo Arts Centre in Rwanda, WoeLab in Togo, or the Assalamalekoum association in Mauritania) described in chapter 4. Without necessarily having to make long-term commitments, the state provides tangible or intangible resources dedicated to commons to promote their security, stabilization, and dissemination.

The resources are of various kinds. They can, for example, be land resources. This situation is encountered in urban areas, when a local authority cedes the administration of public spaces that it owns for a defined period to communities that will use these places for various types of civic activities (e.g., artistic activities, sports facilities, meeting places for various associations that enliven the neighborhood). This is the case for the urban commons presented in chapter 4, which have developed new and open uses for neglected or poorly maintained public spaces at the request of the municipalities of Dakar and Ouagadougou. In areas of high pressure on land resources, and with a view to developing social housing in urban areas, the local authority can sell land at nonmarket prices and under favorable conditions to enable the development of common areas. This is the case, for example, with shared housing (housing cooperatives in Ouagadougou and Dakar and the Community Land Trust in Kenya), described in chapter 3.

It may be a question of structuring infrastructure for commons. This is the case, for example, with development work in rural areas (irrigation infrastructure, access roads, etc.) to create the conditions for the emergence of commons-based entrepreneurship around the exploitation of natural resources, as in the Senegal River Valley project described in chapter 2. It is also the case of the mini drinking water networks in the peripheral neighborhoods of Kinshasa, which are not served by the national company Regideso. These infrastructures were set up by the state, with international funding, and are managed by associations of drinking water users who decide how to allocate the profits from the sale of water to social activities in the neighborhood, such as libraries or community halls (Bédécarrats et al. 2019). The example of the open research platforms set up by the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative,² located in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is also interesting (see chapter 7): the state made clinical trials for a new sleeping sickness drug possible by allowing them to be conducted in local hospitals and putting the necessary regulations in place (Abecassis et al. 2019).

This may include financial resources. The empirical chapters highlighted the fragility and instability of the economic models of African commons. The question of their financing thus arises and, with it, that of the state's recognition of the social, environmental, and societal functions that commons fulfill. These functions are, for example, ecologically responsible practices or the fight against
juvenile delinquency within the urban commons highlighted in chapter 4.
The state has several tools at its disposal.

* The state can provide direct funding to commons in the form of grants or participation in pooled funds. The open platform Ushahidi, for example, which collects testimonies from citizens threatened by natural disasters, human rights violations, corruption, and harassment (see chapter 5), has received a significant amount of financial support in the form of grants from international government agencies thanks to the visibility it gained following the 2007 violence in Kenya. The Lacuna Fund is an example of a pooled fund. The fund supports projects through grants following calls for thematic project proposals and is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, Google.org, the International Development Research Centre, and the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ).

* Beyond direct financing, the state can also act as a guarantor of commons for borrowing from public or private banks (Mazzucato 2015), support community development banks (Filho et al. 2022), create socialized investment funds (Borrits 2022), or regulate the role of public financial intermediaries (Bollier and Conaty 2015; Rigot and Plihon 2022).

* The state can also provide tax relief. One example is Niger's forestry policies, which transferred responsibility for forest resource management to village communities in 1992 and accompanied this transfer with a reform of tax regulations that allowed rural populations to collect taxes on the trade of fuelwood at the source and authorized the creation of rural wood markets, which served as village sales points for traders and transporters (Antona and Farolfi 2001; Mbairamadji 2009; Montagne et al. 2016).

This may involve human resources such as leveraging expertise within public authorities (legal, administrative, or technical support). This is the case, for example, for the housing cooperatives presented in chapter 3, which benefit from plots of land made available by the state, financial advantages (reduced taxation and preferential rates for the repayment of individual or collective housing loans from the Banque de l'Habitat du Sénégal), and technical support from the urban planning ministry.

Finally, the state can support commons in their dissemination strategy and the formation of networks. While commons movement is strong in Sub-Saharan Africa, it is mainly based on the proliferation of small sectoral or territorial initiatives. This fact determines the ways we should think about the diffusion of commons in Africa. For example, chapter 4 highlighted the networking aspect of Sub-Saharan African fab labs, which are at the heart of regional and international networks that allow for the direct sharing of ideas. Another example is the African Storybook initiative described in chapter 5: this literacy project, which provides openly licensed storybooks for early reading in African languages
via an interactive website, has signed formal agreements and is working with four government departments offering the first three grades of schooling in South Africa and Kenya (the Department of Basic Education, the KwaZulu-Natal Education Library Information and Technology Services, and the Reading Support Program in South Africa, as well as the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development in Kenya).³

Even if this arrangement remains rare, the state can now finally get involved beyond its traditional contributions and invest in commons over time. It can create the conditions for the emergence of collective action in the territories, by making resources available and by promoting local public spaces to encourage the intentional construction of commons. This requires that it engage in processes of adaptation, flexibility, and mutual learning. As Ostrom and Basurto (2011) remind us, its attitude is fundamental: it must fully allow for the possibility to experiment and thus to make mistakes. This is the case, for example, with the urban incubators in Dakar and Ouagadougou described in chapter 4, even though the system is not fully developed yet. These incubators consist of experimenting with and supporting new methods of shaping cities by bringing together local communities, public contracting authorities of major urban projects, and civil society stakeholders to develop new ways of doing things through the implementation of micro-projects.

## Three Types of Risks to Overcome

The state's investment in an assertive relationship with commons requires two-way commitments. It is essential that the state not intervene in the establishment of the operating rules of commons and that it respect their mode of existence and their purpose. This risk is particularly important if one considers the nature of the state in Sub-Saharan Africa, as discussed in the first section. On the other hand, if they intend to secure their continuity without major clashes,⁴ commons must not adopt any rules that would put them in opposition to or in contradiction with prevailing laws, regulations, and customs. This essential point appears as one of the design principles elaborated by Ostrom (see chapter 1).⁵ Avoiding conflict with the law and public policy does not in any way diminish the autonomy of commons and their capacity to pursue, if necessary, different and innovative paths (see, for example, on environmental aspects [chapter 2] and on social aspects [chapter 4]).

Any assertive relationship between the state and commons must take several risks into account. We identify three types.

### The Risk of Altering Commons

The first type of risk involves the possibility of altering commons in some way. Ostrom insists, for example, on the dangers that stem from the dependence of
commons on external resources and the dangers of corruption, both of which are very present in African states, as described in the first section. Corruption can especially be seen when the local project is not developed according to local needs and in a location-appropriate form, and the primary motivation is instead to increase the project's chances of being included in the norms of calls for tenders and the criteria for allocating funds from funders, whether national or international (Ostrom 1999). In a similar way, Ridde and Olivier de Sardan (2022) outline risks that they describe as “conflicts of interest,” in the sense that actors in commons can sometimes go against their own perceptions or knowledge in order to comply with the intervention of external actors, such as a financial backer. The financing of a commons by public authorities can have a distorting effect, for example, by integrating a logic of remuneration where the philosophy of commons might otherwise seek to avoid this altogether (Fontaine and Lebrun 2022). When they follow predetermined goals or are organized around specific themes, public funding puts commons in competition with one another and discourages initiatives that come purely from the citizens themselves, as well as synergies between preexisting initiatives in a given territory. The tools used by public authorities to account for the effectiveness of funding also raise questions (see chapter 7).

## The Risk of Instrumentalization, Assimilation, and Capture of Commons

The second type of risk is that of the instrumentalization, assimilation, or even capture of commons by the state. This risk is significant in the contexts mentioned in the first section, where the elites are, in some cases, in a position to capture the income linked to international aid. This risk can also be expressed through technical and legal formalization and standardization processes. The temptation to resort to standardized solutions when the problems that arise are inevitably complex in nature leads to two pitfalls, according to Ostrom (1999): the temptation of “blueprint thinking,” which consists of relying on “ready-made” solutions, and the temptation to trust in simple decision-making procedures, when deliberation must precede collective action. These processes of simplification and standardization can lead to the process of “commoning” becoming too rigid and can put the institutional flexibility of commons at risk.

## The Risk of Shifting Responsibilities from the State to Commons

The third type of risk that commons can encounter was touched upon in the first section through the notion of offloading (Hibou 1999). It refers to the temptation of governments to devolve their responsibilities to these institutional forms, even though the state is still the privileged form of organization for contemporary African societies (Hervé and Gallenga 2019; Olivier de Sardan 2022). This risk of deferring state responsibilities is neither new to Sub-Saharan Africa nor specific to commons. The first section connects this trend of the deferral of
state responsibilities with the proliferation, from the 1990s onward, of national and local organizations, and of development policies supported by international financial institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa advocating “participatory governance,” “decentralized natural resource management,” or “community development.” These policies are deployed within a liberal economic framework that defends the principles of reduced public spending, private-sector development, and the extension of exclusive property rights over public or shared resources whenever possible. They are part of institutional frameworks organized by the promoters of development programs financed by funders or decision-makers, who provide the “constitutional” or even “collective” rules, leaving only the “operational” rules to be decided by the collective, according to the typology proposed by Ostrom (2005) (see chapter 1). This imported Western frame of reference does not take into account either the historical trajectories of social formations nor the specific features of the relations between the state and the different strata of society (Olivier de Sardan 2022).

To conclude this section, the state, in the exercise of its prerogatives and with its own means, can constitute a tool for securing and stabilizing commons in Sub-Saharan Africa by breaking away from the authoritarian impulses and the attempt to incorporate society inherited from its colonial origins, which was described in the first section. Beyond this, it can function as a vector for their development. The question of its positioning and the means it proposes to implement with respect to commons is eminently political. If it fails to modify some of its more traditional activities (e.g., funding through calls for projects, the proliferation of conditions and guarantees, the implementation of standardized performance criteria and norms to evaluate the effects of its funding), state support may lead commons toward practices and targets that they did not develop themselves. Conversely, if the state is aware of the specific entities that commons represent and of the values that they carry, and if it adapts its instruments and attitudes, it can then engage in a more assertive relationship with commons. To prevent the risks that have been mentioned, this relationship can be formalized and take the form of partnerships between the public sector and commons, defining the purpose of the partnership as well as the rights and obligations of each of the parties.

## Beyond This, Any Opportunities for Debate?

Besides the way in which states can support African commons, the latter seem to inspire questions that public actors may or may not be able to address with regard to constructing a single developmental trajectory, in a break with the institutional rigidities and inefficiencies described in the first section. This final section therefore proposes to set out three preliminary items for debate, without claiming to be exhaustive either in the nature of the reflections proposed or in their analysis,
but rather with the aim of paving the way for further work. The first item for debate concerns the contribution of commons to the realization of economic and social rights. The second item for debate addresses the question of the contribution of commons to the general interest. The third point of debate relates to the democratic character that underlies the practices of “commoning” (see chapter 1).

## Realization of Economic and Social Rights

As the first section reminds us, state-society relations in Sub-Saharan Africa have been subject to liberal rationale since the 1980s. In many situations, these motivations run counter to the realization of economic and social rights such as the right to housing, the right to water, the right to food, or the right to energy, which are based on principles of access to these social goods by individuals and communities—particularly the poorest (Flauss 2002). These rights are enshrined in the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, as well as at the regional level in the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which was ratified in 1981 and came into force in 1986.⁶ This charter devotes several provisions to the rights of peoples, in particular the rights to existence and self-determination (Article 20) and special interest rights such as the right to the free disposal of natural resources (Article 21).

Economic and social rights as codified in declarations and applied are not sufficient to protect vulnerable populations for at least two reasons (Pousson 2005). First, they are now “secondary” to rights such as those relating to property and those relating to international trade (which are derived from property rights) (De Schutter 2013). Second, it is the nation-states that are the vehicles of these rights and who remain sovereign in the application of the rules to these populations (Salah 2002).

Commons as we have described and analyzed them throughout this book support the affirmation of economic and social rights. Indeed, their raison d'être includes the principle of the right to existence for the populations concerned. The expression of this right is affirmed through the search for the satisfaction of the common good, understood as a way of inhabiting the world that preserves communities (human and nonhuman) and ecosystems (Berque 2016; Coriat 2020; Vanuxem 2018). It incorporates not only the protection of basic social rights (food, health, education, etc.) vis-à-vis private law (Bosc 2016; Gauthier 2014) but also the recognition of the person, of their presence and their “voice” within and outside commons (see chapter 1). In mirroring this, international and regional written declarations are of prime importance for commons. They constitute a reference point for ensuring, for example, that the way in which commons are managed is sufficiently inclusive and representative of all population groups and that commons will not lead to new forms of discrimination or exclusion. Such declarations provide commons with a kind of constitutional framework to ensure that as they are utilized, commons are indeed put at the service of the interests of the greatest number of people and of future generations (box 6.3).
BOX 6.3

Commons in the Service of Fulfilling the Right to Food

The issue of food is caught in a difficult paradox. The right to food is one of the best established and most codified. However, nearly 1 billion people, or one in nine, suffer from malnutrition. Access to therapeutic food products remains ensnared in the logic of the market. The use of intellectual property is growing: the exclusive rights it defines are often considered effective drivers of innovation. Along with the rights linked to free trade treaties, intellectual property contributes to the maintenance of markets for patented products, which are highly capital intensive and unified, and which are opposed to the accessibility of essential goods in certain African countries.

Certain initiatives are subverting the classic attributes of intellectual property (Coriat et al. 2020). Without confronting them head-on, these initiatives adapt them in order to put them at the service of access to food products of a therapeutic nature. These approaches make it possible to think about and develop different legal tools that go beyond the scope of exclusive property (whether public or private) or to subvert the purely mercantile purpose of intellectual property. This is the case, for example, of Misola, a French association that has registered a trademark for a food supplement deployed in West Africa to prevent malnutrition in young children under the age of five. The flour is made entirely from locally grown ingredients and is produced and marketed in small-scale production units (UPAs—Unités de production artisanale). Most often run by women's cooperatives in villages, UPAs make no profit from their activity. The association transfers its trademark (Misola®) free of charge to the UPAs, which, in return, undertake to follow strict specifications and to accept regular checks on their practices, thus guaranteeing the nutritional quality of the products that are marketed at very low cost. This labeling makes it possible to create an open network of UPAs and to promote the distribution of the product as close to the communities as possible. Misola has been able to innovate by using intellectual property as a tool for disseminating its know-how and as a guarantee of quality for food produced in the villages. This policy has been facilitated by Misola's status as an association, whose financial stability remains highly dependent on public subsidies.

For these entities to be considered as contributing to the right to food, three major elements must be considered (Coriat et al. 2020). The first relates to the conditions (pricing policies, manufacturing, and distribution arrangements) in which food goods are physically made available. The second consideration relates to how initiatives deal with intellectual property issues concerning the products they develop and how the various attributes of property rights (see chapter 1) are, or are not, put in the service of access. Finally, the third consideration is based on the corporate form of the entities, which must give priority to the objective of providing people with access to the goods in question, rather than setting the maximization of profit as a target.
## Definition and Examination of the General Interest

Today, the general interest constitutes the conceptual node that is the very object of the modern state, its law, and its legitimacy (Crétois and Roza 2017). Over time, there has been a shift from what was originally “public,” considered the inalienable property of the people and citizens, to public property understood as the property of the state. The state, which for a long time only had a “right of custody” over public property, gradually saw this right transformed into the right to make use of the property entrusted to it. As such, it has become possible to alienate and privatize these assets (Orsi 2014; Xifaras 2004). This confusion is particularly strong in Sub-Saharan Africa because African society is only minimally constituted as a civil society. As the first section of this chapter reminded us, there is little public debate, little formation of interest groups, and many constraints on the possibilities for mobilizing social forces. There are therefore few spaces and processes for constructing a shared sense of purpose that could outline the contours of the general interest (Gazibo 2012; Gazibo and Moumouni 2017). The latter remains confined to its “instrumental” dimension, with the increase in items of public policy intended not for “populations” but for “users,” the “justiciable,” and the “creditorworthy” (Darbon 2014).

This assimilation of the general interest with the interest of the state is now the subject of renewed questioning (Rochfeld, Cornu, and Martin 2021). These questions are even more fundamental in Sub-Saharan Africa because, as the first section of this chapter explained, the state is being patrimonialized under the leadership of elites through the private monopolization of public goods and is being replaced in many territories by proxies such as NGOs (Darbon 2014; Olivier de Sardan 2022).

The empirical chapters of this book have shown that some of the observed and studied commons serve the general interest when they take on the work of states (box 6.4): this is the case, for example, with the educational functions of hybrid urban spaces (chapter 4) or the transparency functions provided by digital commons (chapter 5). They also serve the general interest when they make it possible to escape the pressure of dominant capitalist norms: land commons for housing, for example, open up access to land and housing in contexts of commodification and speculation in urban land (chapter 3). Beyond that, these commons approach the general interest not as an external conception imposed on them but rather as a tool that is fully integrated into their work, serving reflexive approaches that facilitate the permanent adaptation of practices (Trosa 2017). From this perspective, the state can be the initiator of a procedural effort building “a localized ‘common good’ in stages” rather than public policy based on “a prior conception of ‘the general interest’” (Lascoumes and Le Bourhis 1998, 40).
BOX 6.4

A Digital Commons for the General Interest—The Example of
Open COVID19 in Senegal

Chapter 5 highlighted the existence of African digital commons that serve the general interest. For example, citizens who want to increase government transparency can contribute to the emergence of data commons: this was the approach taken by Open COVID19 in Senegal, which was born out of a desire to publish digitized information, such as the number of cases and their geolocation, that had previously only been communicated verbally by the government. These initiatives are also useful for journalists, researchers, civil society, citizens in general, and policy makers. The IWACU Open Data initiative in Burundi, for example, was developed by a group of journalists to address the lack of access to official data, which was only stored in paper format. Finally, numerous academic studies have shown how important open geospatial data have been for the allocation of aid by governments and nongovernmental organizations (Grinberger et al. 2022).

Democratic Processes

As the first section illustrated, African states are largely made up of imported
structures that are not inclined to be based on, or to create, a political order
in balance with their societies. Besides the single source of authority inherent
in the exercise of administrative power, they are based, in most cases, on an
“authoritarian principle,” despite the democratization experiments under way
in various countries in the region (Darbon 2009; Gazibo 2010). Particularly in
West Africa, this situation is now being met with strong criticism, which is lev-
eled against “democracy” and the practices to which it gives rise: it is criticized
for not keeping its promises and for being incapable of “changing people’s lives”
(Villalón and Idrissa 2020). There is thus a critique of both the effectiveness of
democracy and its legitimacy (Bayart 2009; Gazibo 2005; Mbembe 2019). This
is evidenced by the political transition in Chad and the recent coups in Burkina
Faso, Guinea, and Mali. As the popular support for these practices shows, this
is not a minor or marginal phenomenon.²

In this context, commons, which in their very essence have the potential to
revitalize democracy<sup>8</sup> and offer protection of the common good, appear as a
set of mechanisms and supports that can provide fresh perspectives for public
authorities. If their voice is heard and conveyed, they have the power to renew
both the concept and the practice of democracy on key issues by introducing a
deliberative and participatory dimension into public affairs (Bourcier, Hériard-
Dubreuil, and Lavelle 2013; Lucarelli 2013).
Beyond that, if their role is recognized and supported by the state and local governments at different scales of action, it is possible to imagine commons finding a place in the forms of polycentric governance that Ostrom called for (Ostrom 2012).⁹ Building on Ostrom’s work, Aligica and Tarko (2012) define polycentric governance as a set of institutional arrangements in which a plurality of autonomous decision-making centers, each with its own sphere of action, operates under a single set of rules and objectives.¹⁰ Ostrom’s work on policing and water management concludes that the existence of multiple units under different authorities (national, regional, municipal, local) leads, despite the risk of duplication, to more effective systems (e.g., in terms of user and beneficiary satisfaction) than a vertical (top-down) approach to governance in which local entities must submit to centrally defined injunctions. These reflections are particularly relevant in the case of multiscalar issues, such as the fight against climate change or the governance of biodiversity (Obura and Treyer 2022). In the Policy Research Working Paper she proposed for the World Bank’s 2010 World Development Report, Ostrom writes about climate change (Ostrom 2009, 28): “Given the severity of the threat, simply waiting for resolution of these issues at a global level, without trying out policies at multiple scales because they lack a global scale, is not a reasonable stance.”

Conclusion

Because of its historical trajectory, the characteristics of the postcolonial African state (authoritarian modes of operation, institutional weaknesses, patrimonialization, the strong influence of international actors, little room for maneuver granted to social actors) are unfavorable to commons on the whole. However, as the previous empirical chapters have shown, there are many situations in which the state, within the framework of its proper functions, can and does act as a facilitator or contributor to commons. In this regard, it responds to a “demand” from commons, which have difficulties in guaranteeing their sustainability having been born out of citizens’ initiatives.

Beyond that, if we take a step back from current events to look toward the future, two sets of facts should be noted. On the one hand, faced with its internal constraints (political and associative pluralism), its external constraints (economic dependence, the influence of external actors and market logic), and the economic, social, and environmental challenges it faces, the state no longer has a monopoly on public space or on the pursuit of the general interest. On the other hand, commons, like other actors, assume the role of substitutes at their own scale for states that are failing in their duties in many respects. In this context, taking into account commons, both as practices in territories and as
bearers of demands for the common good and the right to existence, might
prove to be an opportunity for African states to alter their trajectories.

In this light, working to promote the development of commons, creating the conditions for them to flourish, and even engaging with them in policies that seek to collectively construct the common good can enable states to adopt new positions, opening up spaces for debate on the realization of economic and social rights, the definition and pursuit of the general interest, and democratic processes. These topics, which remain underdeveloped, are all potential avenues for future work.

Notes

1. Ostrom uses the example of the US Geological Survey, an American institution that produces free and open access to hydrological and geological data for the United States. For Ostrom, this type of institution plays an essential role for commons and communities in their research and management of water resources (Ostrom 2020).

2. https://dndi.org/.

3. https://www.saide.org.za/documents/2017_03_29_ASb_accountability_evaluation.pdf.

4. Commons can indeed emerge from the occupation of public spaces that have an undetermined status or are considered as such (vacant lots, buildings, squares). The examples of the “Asilo Filangieri” and of the seven places occupied and transformed into common goods in the city of Naples (Italy) show that relationships with the owners and managers of these spaces can become more peaceful and give rise to stabilized forms of coexistence over time (Festa 2021; Micciarelli 2014).

5. Design principle 7 stipulates that the self-organization of the community must follow rules that are accepted and recognized by the authorities at a higher level.

6. https://au.int/sites/default/files/treaties/36390-treaty-0011_-_african_charter_on_human_andPeoplesRights_f.pdf.

7. Reflections from a series of seminars organized in February and March 2022 by the Agence française de développement (French Development Agency), the Centre d'analyse, de prévision et de stratégie (Center for Analysis, Forecasting and Strategy) of the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, and the Institute for Strategic Research of the École Militaire.

8. As we have emphasized several times in the book, the expression of “voice” must be qualified in certain situations, notably when rules of a magico-religious nature (which are not debated) are imposed or when users do not seek to participate in the definition of either the rules of access and use or the mechanisms of control and sanction (Colin, Lavigne Delville, and Léonard 2022).

9. The definition proposed by Aligica and Tarko (2012, 1) is as follows: “A structural feature of social systems of many decision centers having limited and autonomous prerogatives and operating under an overarching set of rules.”

10. Polycentric governance plays out along two intersecting axes (Weinstein 2013). On the horizontal axis, different “action arenas” can either cooperate or compete,
depending on the environment in which they operate. On the vertical axis, the different levels of rules interact, from the micro-institutional level (a community managing a resource) to the macro-institutional level, which has constitutional value (like the laws of a given country).

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