Paper short abstract:

We aim contribute to the discussion on empowered deliberation in digital development to counter ongoing marginalisation of voices and epistemes, disrupting the recursion of colonial power dynamics and fostering cognitive justice in post-colonial contexts.

Paper long abstract:

One of the hallmarks of the colonial project is the devaluing of local cultures, epistemologies, and ways of being. Devaluing these aspects has become amplified in the digitalisation of post-colonial contexts, fuelled by top-down techno-feudalism and western agendas. Digitalisation perpetuates the marginalisation of local knowledge and knowledge systems, imposing foreign ways of being, and entrenching power and hegemonic influence from the west. These dynamics intersect with the global efforts towards digital development, which are meant to pursue an inclusive, coherent and integrated agenda across the social, economic, and environmental dimensions. The phrase 'leave no one behind' implies that existing contexts have to catch up to epistemic agendas set under ontologies misaligned with what progress and existence mean in post-colonial contexts. The paper critically presents the manifestations of coloniality in digital development across knowledge systems - problematizing the notions of ‘indigenous knowledge’, and the universalization of western epistemologies and methodology; forms of being - online identities codified through the western lens and norms; and power dynamics - associated with ‘digital inclusion’, digital power asymmetries associated with frontier technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, digital surveillance, and techno-feudalism. Critical in framing how these elements influence the design and governance of frontier technologies, is a step toward opening and developing transformational spaces of deliberation, and calling out superficial representation of local actors in the name of ‘inclusive decolonised practice’. ‘Epistemic power’ of deliberation should be enabled where self-correcting learning processes among empowered actors are improved through knowledge and feedback in digital innovation.