From the Digital Divide to Digital Justice in the Global South[Keynote Web Science Workshop DigDivDigHum-20]
Richard Heeks

Centre for Digital Development, University of Manchester, United Kingdomrichard.heeks@manchester.ac.uk

ABSTRACTAs we shift paradigms in the relationship between digital technologies and international development, many issues will need tobe rethought. In this paper, I look at the changing nature of therelationship between digital and inequality in the global South; inparticular tracing the re-scoping from concerns just about the digital divide and exclusion, to broader concerns about digital justicethat also cover adverse incorporation into digitalised development
systems across economic, political and social spheres.

CCS CONCEPTS• Information Systems; • World Wide Web; • Web Applications; • Social Networks; • Social and Professional Topics; •Computing / Technology Policy;

KEYWORDS
Digital divide, Digital development, Digital justice, Digital inequality, ICT4D 3.0
ACM Reference Format:
Richard Heeks. 2020. From the Digital Divide to Digital Justice in theGlobal South: [Keynote Web Science Workshop DigDivDigHum-20]. In
12th ACM Conference on Web Science (WebSci ’20 Companion), July 6–10,
2020, Southampton, United Kingdom. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2 pages.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3394332.3402821

1ICT4D PARADIGM SHIFTIn recent years, there has been talk of a paradigm shift emerging
in the relationship between digital technologies and international
development; typically referred to either as moving from “ICT4D2.0” to “ICT4D3.0”, or more generally from “ICT4D” to “digitaldevelopment” (Bon & Akkermans 2019 [1], Heeks 2020 [6]). Various
dimensions of the paradigm shift can be identified: changes in thenature of the technologies being used in the global South; changes inthe salience and presence of digital data in development processes;changes in the demographics of digital users; etc.
Out of these dimensions of change, one can then identify changes
in a number of development issues. The one discussed here willbe that of digital inequality; originally understood in terms of thedigital divide; something which, historically, has been a central
digital problem for the lower-income countries of the global South.
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https://doi.org/10.1145/3394332.3402821

Initially defined in terms of lack of access to digital technologies,
the digital divide has extended over time to include lack of ability
to afford the technology, and lack of ability to effectively use thetechnology (Heeks 2018 [5]). But the problem remains framed interms of exclusion.
As digital intensification during the Covid lockdown has demonstrated, the digital divide remains a potent constraint on development. However, growing digitisation in recent years has meantthat growing numbers of citizens in the global South are no longer
excluded from digital systems and processes:“We can thus talk seriously about the existence of a digital “nervous system” for development. This is a pervasive digital infrastructure in which most development organisations from international
agencies through government departments to small communitybased organisations have internet access—often broadband internet
access—and in which most individuals in developing countries have
digital mobile phone access.” (Heeks 2020 [6]).
From this, a new challenge emerges. Not exclusion but “adverseincorporation”, defined “as operating ‘when powerful, connected
people command resources from which they draw significantly
increased returns by coordinating the effort of outsiders whomthey exclude from the full value added by that effort’ (Tilly, 1998,p. 10 [12]).” (Phillips 2013: 176 [11]). As the definition indicates,
adverse incorporation is a key mechanism by which inequalities
are maintained and increased: as those with power and resources
gain more from development systems than those who are adverselyincorporated.
We can see evidence of adverse incorporation into digitalised
development systems – and consequent exacerbation of inequalities– across economic, political and social spheres. For example:• The so-called “thintegration” of African small enterprises
into digitalised global value chains, where gains are made bylead firms in the global North at the expense of those small
enterprises (Murphy & Carmody 2015 [10], Foster et al. 2018[4]).
• Use of digital technologies to provide the state with increasing means to surveil and control its populations (Creemers
2018 [2]).
• The way in which growing use of mobile phones can be associated with an increase in violence against women (Hobbis
2018 [9]).

2SOCIAL JUSTICE

The battle against the digital divide and for digital inclusion must
continue via technical and social innovation to make digital more
ubiquitous, more affordable and more usable. But alongside this,concerns about digital equity must also include a battle against
adverse digital incorporation.

WebSci ’20 Companion, July 6–10, 2020, Southampton, United Kingdom

Richard Heeks

REFERENCES

Figure 1: Conceptual Model of Digital Justice for Development (adapted from Heeks & Shekhar 2019 [7])This will first mean countering the current adverse digital incorporations. An example here would be the Fairwork project, whichseeks to address inequalities between capital and labour as workers
are adversely incorporated into the digitalised labour market of theplatform economy (Fairwork 2019 [3]). Or use of mobile phones asa platform intervention seeking to prevent gender-based violence(Yankah et al 2019 [13]).
It will also mean designing “advantageous digital incorporations”: those with a specific pro-equity focus. Pro-equity uses ofdigital technologies have been a mainstay of the ICT4D field formany years. The insight provided by adverse incorporation, however, is that incorporating marginalised groups into development
systems typically leads to growing inequality due to the unequal
structural basis of those systems (Hickey & Du Toit 2013 [8]). Advantageous digital incorporation can only occur, then, if digitalinterventions in some way address underlying structural inequities.
This takes the debate away from the language of technology
and design and into the realm of social justice. As the Figure 1
model demonstrates, it takes the focus away from the practices
and procedures of digital development systems – what one may
call procedural digital justice – and towards the need to impact thewider institutions, structural relations, digital rights and epistemethat surround such systems. Only by impacting those can we movefrom adverse to advantageous digital incorporation, and deliver
digital justice in the global South.

[1] Bon, A. & Akkermans, H. (2019). Digital development: elements of a critical ICT4D
theory and praxis. In P. Nielsen & H. C. Kimaro (eds.), ICT4D 2019, Springer,Cham, 26-38. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19115-3_3[2] Creemers, R. (2018). China’s Social Credit System: An Evolving Practice of Control, SSRN http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3175792[3] Fairwork (2019) Fairwork: Labour Standards in the Platform Economy, Fairwork:
Oxford, UK, Cape Town, South Africa, Bangalore, India[4] Foster, C., Graham, M., Mann, L., Waema, T. & Friederici, N. (2018). Digital control
in value chains: Challenges of connectivity for East African firms. EconomicGeography, 94(1), 68-86[5] Heeks, R. (2018). Information and Communication Technology for Development(ICT4D), Routledge, Abingdon, UK[6] Heeks, R. (2020). ICT4D 3.0? Part 1—The components of an emerging “digitalfor-development” paradigm. The Electronic Journal of Information Systems inDeveloping Countries, e12124.
[7] Heeks, R. & Shekhar, S. (2019). Datafication, development and marginalised urban
communities: an applied data justice framework. Information, Communication& Society, 22(7), 992-1011[8] Hickey, S. & Du Toit, A. (2013). Adverse incorporation, social exclusion, andchronic poverty. In A. Shepherd & J. Brunt (eds.), Chronic Poverty, Palgrave
Macmillan, London, 134-159[9] Hobbis, S. K. (2018). Mobile phones, gender-based violence, and distrust in stateservices: Case studies from Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. Asia PacificViewpoint, 59(1), 60-73[10] Murphy, J.T. & Carmody, P. (2015). Africa’s Information Revolution, John Wiley,Chichester, UK[11] Phillips, N. (2013). Unfree labour and adverse incorporation in the global economy:
Comparative perspectives on Brazil and India. Economy and Society, 42(2), 171196[12] Tilly, C. (1998). Durable Inequality, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA[13] Yankah, E., Mohamed, O., Wringe, A., Afaneh, O., Saleh, M., Speed, O., ... &Scott, J. (2019). Feasibility and acceptability of mobile phone platforms to deliverinterventions to address gender-based violence among Syrian adolescent girls
and young women in Izmir, Turkey. Vulnerable Children and Youth Studies,advance online publication

THE AUTHOR
Richard Heeks is Chair in Development Informatics at the Global
Development Institute, University of Manchester; and Director of
the CentreforDigitalDevelopment. He has been consulting and researching on digital and development for more than 30 years andhis most-recent book publication is Information and Communication Technology for Development (2018). His research interests
are data-intensive development, e-resilience and e-sustainability,
and the digital economy in developing countries. He is currently
a co-investigator on the Fairworkprogramme; an action research
initiative to improve the working conditions of people employed in
the gig economy. He has a PhD in Indian IT industry development,
directs the MScprogrammeinICTsforDevelopment, and runs theICTsforDevelopmentblog.