Digital Colonization and Human Security in West Africa

The twenty-first-century scramble for Africa is invisible. It is not waged through occupying armies or territorial land grabs, but through algorithms, digital public infrastructures, and the relentless extraction of biological and personal data. Digital Colonization and Human Security in West Africa: A Case Study of Ghana by Christopher Noyuoro, George Gyader, and Frank Kannigenye Teng-Zeng offers a critical examination of how digital colonialism is reshaping the very foundations of human security in Ghana and across West Africa. The authors argue that the extraction of data-once dismissed as a mere byproduct of technological progress-has become the modern-day equivalent of historical land grabs, where human life itself is appropriated through its conversion into data . This book exposes the profound tension at the heart of African statecraft: leaders caught between a fierce desire for political sovereignty and the harsh realities of macroeconomic dependency. The book reveals two distinct mechanisms of extraction currently reshaping Ghana’s digital landscape. The 'Hard Power' model is aggressively transactional, exemplified by the United States’ demand for decades-long access to national health data systems in exchange for health assistance . Ghana’s bold rejection of a $109 million U.S. health deal in April 2026-refusing to surrender citizens’ personal data-demonstrates the growing resistance to this model . Yet the authors also expose a more insidious 'Soft Power' model championed by France, which embeds foreign-architected digital platforms at the core of national infrastructure. When Ghana accepted France’s National Health Platform in April 2026, the adoption of a proprietary monolith effectively outsourced the nation’s central nervous system-accepting a foreign-built system is not capacity building but the establishment of long-term infrastructural control . This paradox exposes the limits of ideology in an unequal world: you cannot exercise total digital sovereignty while in financial distress. Digital Colonization and Human Security in West Africa explores how these dynamics of extraction intersect with broader threats to human security.