Data sovereignty for security in mineral economies
Indigenous data governance offers a pathway to accountable, peaceful and sustainable mineral development across Africa.
Addressing mineral supply chains as a source of protracted conflict is crucial for developing effective peacekeeping and peacebuilding strategies that are needed across Africa. While analyses often focus on market dynamics, armed groups and environmental degradation, a critical element is consistently omitted: the data gap—the “ecologies of value” of the Indigenous communities whose lands are mined.
Understanding how Indigenous value systems frame wealth and resilience opens a pathway to examine the governance dimensions of mineral economies—particularly the role of Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDS) in strengthening security, justice and peace. How does data ownership and control determine who benefits from Africa’s critical minerals and who bears the cost?
While ecologies of value and IDS are concepts not yet mainstream in mineral or security policy, these approaches are gaining traction across wider discourses on sustainable development, environmental governance and human rights, offering complementary lenses for rethinking how benefit, risk and resilience are defined in resource-rich regions.
The governance of critical minerals in the Congo Basin cannot be assessed solely through external economic or geopolitical lenses, as traditional mineral value chain analyses often do. The dominant measures of benefit remain GDP growth, export revenue or foreign direct investment. Such narrow economic metrics obscure the ways Indigenous communities conceptualise wealth and how security is shaped on the ground.
IDS refers to the right of Indigenous peoples to control data collection processes about their communities, lands and resources; own that data and manage access according to their own protocols; and apply that data to inform their own priorities and governance structures. The violation of IDS is a fundamental driver of insecurity in the Congo Basin.
The violation of IDS is a fundamental driver of insecurity in the Congo Basin
Without IDS, decision-making in mineral economies remains extractive and unsustainable. Data gathered about communities and ecosystems reinforce unequal power dynamics. Extractive mining practices risk eroding communal governance systems, displacing populations and fueling organised crime linked to resource trafficking and pollution. Weak enforcement, corruption and land grabbing intensify the crisis, while fragile judicial systems fail to protect rights or ensure accountability. Without community-owned data on land and resource rights, impunity flourishes and local insecurities escalate.
IDS is the ethical and procedural expression of ecologies of value: data as stewardship rather than extraction. Restoring data ownership to affected populations allows decision-making to become participatory, transparent and accountable—key conditions for sustainable peace and security in resource-rich regions. Beyond preventing conflict, IDS provides a pathway to redefine development itself. Working with communities to develop new indicators of wealth and well-being that account for natural, social and cultural capital challenges GDP-centric models, and instead promotes sustainable bio-economies over destructive mining.
In practice, IDS means that communities—not outside consultants—collect and manage the information that shapes mining decisions. It can take the form of participatory mapping of concessions, local databases of social and environmental impacts, or digital traceability systems co-managed by cooperatives. Community-held data on land boundaries, forest resources and social impacts enable the verification of corporate claims, tracking of revenue flows and monitoring of environmental degradation in real time.
Several African pilot projects now use digital mapping, participatory GIS and blockchain-based traceability systems to register community land rights and track cobalt or gold supply chains. Such systems shift control over information, and therefore power, toward those most affected. In Ghana, a recent Strategic Environmental and Social Assessment (SESA) was carried out to support the formalisation of artisanal and small-scale mining, reinforcing these broader continental efforts to increase transparency, accountability and community agency.
Community-based ecosystem governance initiatives, supported by organisations such as IMPACT’s Powering Resilience program, demonstrate how inclusive leadership, gender equity and traditional knowledge strengthen both climate adaptation and local peace. Natural capital accounting approaches, now advocated by African policy institutes, provide a means to value ecosystem services that sustain both local societies and regional stability. Recognising women’s ecological knowledge and community roles expands what counts as wealth beyond fiscal metrics, linking IDS directly to minimising gender and human vulnerabilities (e.g. security guarantees around land tenure, inclusion, etc.). Women in the rural Sudan and the Congo Basin, for example, often hold knowledge systems that sustain food security and community healing, yet they are disproportionately marginalised by extractivist economies.
National processes through the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) illustrate how transparent data systems, when coupled with community access, can expose irregularities and redirect revenues toward local development. This transparency curbs illegal mining and resource trafficking, strengthens local governance and provides evidence for judicial and policy reform. With publicly accessible data, community monitors and journalists can expose false reporting and illicit payments, deterring corruption before it escalates into conflict. Where communities manage data collectively, local decision-making likely becomes more trusted, and disputes over land or revenue have a better chance of peaceful resolution.
Supporting IDS is a profound investment in a secure, just and sustainable future for Africa. It aligns with the AU’s emphasis on self-determined development and climate resilience, the Peace and Security Council’s focus on the importance of addressing environmental drivers of conflict, and the Africa Mining Vision’s call for transparency, community monitoring and beneficiation. Each, in essence, is a data governance mechanism, also complementing frameworks such as the OECD’s due diligence guidance on mineral supply chains.
A singular economic approach cannot resolve this multifaceted crisis. An interdisciplinary development framework is crucial for designing policies that are both effective and legitimate. Integrating IDS into policy and practice ensures true free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC). Without control over the data that shape decisions about their immediate environment, communities cannot negotiate on equal footing or prevent conflict. Moving beyond consultation to making FPIC a non-negotiable foundation of any project requires strengthening community land tenure and legal literacy. This also strengthens Africa’s collective security architecture by ensuring that peacebuilding, economic development and environmental protection are grounded in the same data ecosystem. Indigenous knowledge of land and social dynamics offers the most granular form of conflict, peace and security analysis. When integrated—on Indigenous terms—into early warning systems, IDS provides real-time community intelligence on land tensions, illicit mining and displacement risks. This is information that can enhance the African Union’s Peace and Security Council responses, making them more effective, immediate and grounded in local realities.
Indigenous knowledge of land and social dynamics offers the most granular form of conflict, peace and security analysis
Expanding Africa’s security lens to include data governance and IDS is crucial. The continent is uniquely placed to advance this dialogue globally by highlighting how alternative conceptions of wealth can build peace in resource-rich contexts. Upholding IDS is not a niche concern: it is central to African agency. Policy that enables plural forms of wealth can shift the critical minerals rush from a driver of insecurity into an opportunity for inclusive development.
By advancing IDS, the Congo Basin nations and the African Union can promote a new paradigm where security is measured by the health of ecosystems and communities, not the volume of exports.
Image: Julien Harneis/Flickr
Part II of the series: Rethinking wealth and security in the Congo Basin
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