Data Marginalization In South Africa: A Quest For Inclusive Digital Participation

Many governments in the Global South are still vulnerable to poverty, hunger, civil wars, diseases and socioeconomic inequalities that may hinder them from fully embracing digital democracy, where citizens can participate digitally in national affairs. South Africa is one of the countries that are experiencing social ills and where data marginalisation has seen citizens being excluded from using the latest digital technologies ushered in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) to engage with others. To understand how data marginalisation affects the social and economic development in South Africa, the researchers employed a secondary data review approach, which allows for the use of expansive literature sources, documents and peer-reviewed articles on data marginalisation, digital economy and digital participation. The analysis of the aforementioned sources revealed several dangers that data marginalisation poses to social and economic development of South Africa. Due to poverty and unemployment in some South Africa provinces, data marginalisation widens the digital divide due to the absence of digital infrastructure, incompetent leadership, load-shedding and inflation. All these factors infringe on citizens' rights to participate in social and economic discourse using digital media. The research established that governments can address data marginalisation by harnessing their human, financial and technological capacity to embrace modern digital devices and information communication technologies (ICTs) to grow economies and create better living standards for the general citizenry. This research contributes to the growing body of knowledge on data marginalisation, digital democracy and digital participation, which are some of the expectations of human life in the digital age. The paper recommends that the South African government should provide digital solutions to mitigate the growing data marginalisation and digital divide, which affect the citizen's capacity to connect to the digital world and tap into some of the opportunities that are generated by the vast technological revolution.