vi EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Data is increasingly recognised as a strategic asset, integral to policy-making, private and public sector innovation and performance management, and creating new entrepreneurial opportunities for businesses and individuals. When applied to government services, emerging technologies can generate massive amounts of digital data and significantly contribute to social progress and economic growth. The central role of data requires a high-level and strategic policy perspective that can balance multiple policy objectives - from unleashing the economic and social potential of data to the prevention of harms associated with mass collection and processing of personal data. The purpose of this document is to provide the policy framework for African countries to maximise the benefits of a data-driven economy by creating an enabling policy environment for the private and public investments necessary to support data-driven value creation and innovation. This enabling environment refers both to the collaboration between in-country sectors, institutions and stakeholders, an alignment of their development priorities, and the harmonisation of policy across the continent in a manner that provides the scale and scope required to create globally competitive markets. From a policy perspective, the approach adopted is people-centred, locating them in relation to the role of data in contemporary economy and society by identifying the elements and linkages in what can be called the “data ecosystem” in order to identify the exact points of policy intervention. This allows for a systemic assessment of the interrelated challenges arising from global developments that impact emerging national data economies and those arising within the context of nascent data-driven economic activity, uneven institutional endowments, and human development in many African countries. This enables the design of a contextually grounded but forward-looking data policy framework that uses economic regulation to guide policy makers in realising opportunities for data-driven value creation. The framework points to how opportunities can be realised and how associated risks could be mitigated by creating an enabling and trusted environment. Building a positive data economy national and regional will require unprecedented levels of collaboration between stakeholders to disrupt the economic, political, and policy pressures already being felt from the global data economy. In order to ensure equitable and safe access to data for innovation and competition, Member States should establish a unified legal approach that is clear, unambiguous and offers protection and obligations across the continent. Existing legal instruments and institutions should be revisited where necessary to ensure that they are not in conflict with one another and that they offer complementary levels of protection and obligations. A comprehensive data strategy will necessarily include the harmonisation between competition, trade, and taxation policies and laws both at the national and regional levels. This is so an optimised data ecosystem for Africa balances revenue mobilisation and the need to avoid distortions to local markets and the global tax system. Intellectual property laws should also be revised to clarify that they do not generally impede the flow of data or data protection. At the same time, governments need to develop transversal digital policies and strategies to coordinate activities across the public sector and between the public and private sectors to meet national objectives.