Wits Chancellor advocates for the voiceless in the digital age

Wits Chancellor, Dr Judy Dlamini made a passionate plea to consider marginalised people who needs to be included in the digital transformation process.

In her closing address at the 17^th edition of the International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV), she asked delegates to notice those missing in the room.

“I want you to notice the missing residents of Mamelodi township... notice the missing rural dweller. Notice the loud absence of the one who could not afford the conference registration fees and transport to be here.

“Notice the un-connected, un-aware, un-skilled millions in the global south who are living alternate realities to many of the digital dreams that we are discussing here. Notice the missing ones that don’t trust in digitalisation,” said Dlamini.

The Chancellor said that while we develop our digital compacts and infrastructures,  policy strategies and marketing plans, research and models, we need to acknowledge that, the world we are living in is becoming increasingly harsh and precarious. 

“The digital divide between Global North and Global South; and between race, class and gender profiles is already massive. And the legacies and interests that create and sustain these inequalities are still very much at play”, she added.

The issue of language and indigenous knowledge, which was discussed during other sessions, was important to Dlamini.

“That little girl or Gogo (grandmother) who cannot speak here for herself truly bothers me, whose language and indigenous knowledge is ignored and/or excluded make me feel like an accomplice in her exclusion. The thing is it doesn’t have to be that way,” she said. 

A third of the world remains unconnected to the Internet, and according to the Global Inclusion Partnership, “Women living in rural areas are three times more likely to lack Internet access and men are 21% more likely to be online than women globally, rising to 52% in the Least Developed Countries and since 2011, the [digital access] gender gap has only dropped half a percentage point, from 30.9% to 30.4%.” 

“That’s just taking gender, as one dimension of exclusion. While various conversations have emphasised, as per our theme, 'Trust and Ethical Digital Governance for the world we want”' we cannot ignore or tire of the questions: Can there really be trust in a global digital order that simply reproduces the exclusions and colonisations of the industrial age? Or that makes promises that cannot be met?”, she said.

The Chancellor said this is a call for our collective Human and Artificial intelligence to find ways to:

• Do much more local, contextualized work and research, with less generalisation, more connected specificity. Let us truly understand our purpose and conditions.
• We need learning networks for knowledge sharing and theory building. ICEGOV is a fantastic basis for this; may the success of this week which builds on the past conferences, breed further success both in your respective countries, and globally. 
• We need much, much more capability building. In basic education, digital skills development, futures literacy, public sector innovation. All that we have mentioned here.
• And we need multi-stakeholder trust and action. The address from Minister Bosun Tijani of Nigeria emphasised the ecosystem approach that is required, bridging between government, industry, civil society, and academia so that we are leveraging our full capacities given the complexity and scale of what we are facing. And here I must mention that we also need improved mechanisms for academia and the public / private sector to interact and learn and act with each other.

 ICEGOV 2024 was hosted by South Africa’s Department of Public Service and Administration, the Centre for Public Service Innovation and the Wits School of Governance (Wits University) in partnership with United Nations University.

Image credit: Zibusiso Manzini-Moyo <Zibusiso.Manzini-Moyo@wits.ac.za>

Video credit: Hellmann Hlomuka <hellmann.hlomuka@wits.ac.za>

Watch some of the reflections: