Infomediation | Digital trade and Brexit

This is a short article for the comment blog of the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI). It explores the growth in focus on digital trade within trade deals and reflects on what this means for trade deals related to Brexit.

The balancing act of Brexit and digital trade

As the UK leaves the EU it risks a potential ‘digital cliff-edge’. How it navigates its way through global tensions around digital trade rules will orientate the shape of the economy for years to come

This article stems from a wider project exploring the political economy of digital trade, with a particular focus on developing and emerging nations

Our previous conference paper ‘Geographies of Information Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa’ has now been published in The African Technopolitan, a bi-annual magazine published by the African Centre of Technology Studies (ACTS) on science, technology and development.

The January issue which includes quite a number of interesting articles on ICT in Africa can be downloaded here (PDF).

Here’s a blog summary of a presentation that I made at ICT2015 on the Market Information Systems panel

Market information systems are growing in popularity as an intervention by governments, NGOs and private firms alike. New information provision for farmers, often price infromation over mobile, have been touted as a way of helping farmers improve the price they get for their produce, and reduce their dependency on middlemen.

In our research we explored the impacts of connectivity in the tea sector in Rwanda, and we spent much time mapping the actors, information flows and relations that gave us critical insight into the potentials and limitations of market information systems…..full post