This background paper developed for South Centre, Geneva, highlights how developing countries need to develop competencies and skills in global diplomacy around digital trade, and shape new geopolitical strategies, moving beyond narrow lenses of IT industry concerns or ICTs for development. Data is the new raw material that is extracted from developing countries by a few, primarily US based, corporates from the Global North, which is then ‘manufactured’ into ‘digital intelligence’. This digital intelligence is then employed to control various sectors - urban transportation, health, education, agriculture, information access - across the globe. Developing countries have not understood these deep social-structural implications of the digital phenomenon.
