Yes / Africa has recently focused on an ambition to achieve digital transformation through the pursuit of various flagship initiatives which are aimed at achieving its ‘Agenda 2063’ objectives. Digital transformation will be better achieved through appropriate cyber governance policies and mechanisms, and the success of Africa’s Digital Transformation Strategy 2020-2030 hinges on diverse factors. According to the Strategy, African governments have a fundamental responsibility to create an enabling environment, with policies and regulations that promote digital transformation across foundation pillars, which include cybersecurity. The Strategy also stipulates the need to reinforce the region’s human and institutional capacity to secure the cyberspace by building trust and confidence in the use of cyber technologies. The aim of the paper is to examine Africa’s cyber governance agenda in relation to peace and security. While there are political dimensions to determining the thresholds of such discourses in Africa, the uncertainties of governance mechanisms, political underpinnings and limitations in digital capacity may mean that international standards of cyber governance have merely been theoretical in the African context. The paper examines Africa’s extant policies and political strategies for cyber governance, and the region’s interaction with international cyber governance processes. The paper further discusses the prospects and challenges to cyber governance in the region, and the approaches to leveraging international cooperation in promoting cyber stability in the region.

The adoption of the Digital Market Acts (DMA) marked a significant development in the direction of the European Union’s stronger approach to regulating its digital economy. This thesis sought to evaluate the European Union's structural power in the digital economy as well as the DMA’s potential impact on the future of the EU’s digital sovereignty policy. Through the use of qualitative content analysis, the author comes to the conclusion that the European Union has extensive regulatory authority over technology companies that operate in its digital market. This power derives from Articles 2(2), 5, and 6 of the DMA, which provide the European Union authority to govern and manage data access and control in the digital market. The EU’s commitment to digital sovereignty, which promotes national authority over their digital infrastructure and data, is reflected in the DMA’s implementation. This thesis argues that the DMA signifies a shift in the right direction for encouraging fair competition and reducing digital market monopolies, regardless of concerns over the DMA’s influence on the European Union’s trade relations with the United States. This research suggests that the European Union has the potential to affect the structure of the global digital market and the behavior of digital companies.

The General Data Protection Regulation has undoubtedly affected our society, both on anindividual everyday level as well as from the greater perspective of companies, the publicsector, and nations. The purpose of the GDPR is to protect the data of European citizens byputting further responsibility on organizations that store individual data. However, as withevery decision, this has had implications that might not have been predicted or accountedfor and which can disrupt its initial cause. Certain industries have been highly regulatedwhen it comes to data even before the GDPR, one of these is the health-tech industry whichmanages medical data which is perceived to be very sensitive and has for example beenregulated through the Patient Data Act.There is currently a research gap regarding how the GDPR has affected organizations andtheir journey toward compliance. This qualitative study was conducted using a criticalrealism perspective with a critical constructivist approach. The study is done incollaboration with the Swedish Kubernetes platform service provider Elastisys. Byconducting interviews with both the company itself and also with some of their health-techclients, as well as looking into cases where healthcare organizations have been fined underGDPR this thesis aimed towards answering the question of, “What effects have the GDPRlegislation had on the health-tech market and how have the organizations within itadapted?”.The result of this thesis show that the organizations have been able to reach compliance andmanage the process, however the implications have been clearer and more understandableas time has passed. This could be partly explained by the growing number of support-toolsand -organizations available today. Furthermore, due to the strong regulations and changingconditions within this particular industry the organizations are used to rapid transitions.Something that has implicated the general digital development of the industry but also madethem more adaptable to changing conditions. When it comes to the health-tech industrythere have been a higher pressure for compliance for those that work with the public sectorin comparison to those working against end users.Alongside the prohibited digital development, the GDPR has had other implications, suchas a gap between legal and technical expertise and conflicts between legal compliance andgeneral data security. Which, if not handled correctly can lead to less secure solutions.Another interesting implication of the GDPR is the indifference of individuals regardingtheir data. In light of this finding, this thesis also aspires to further elaborate on the currentdebate of digital sovereignty and its importance in the context of national negotiations withforeign powers.

Ältere Menschen bilden vor dem Hintergrund der demografischen Entwicklung einen großen und wachsenden Teil in unserer Gesellschaft, Kultur und Wirtschaft. Damit verbunden sind nicht nur Herausforderungen für das Sozial-, Pflege- und Gesundheitswesen, sondern im Sinne einer gelingenden Integration stellen sich unweigerlich Fragen nach Teilhabe und Mitwirkungsmöglichkeiten für diese Personengruppe. ... Demnach stellt sich die Frage, wie vor dem Hintergrund der gebotenen Chancen eine positive Transformation im Hinblick auf „Altern und Technik“ gelingen kann – eine Transformation, die digitale Teilhabe und Teilgabe i. S. von Partizipation fördert und gleichzeitig die digitale Souveränität und die digitalen Kompetenzen älterer Menschen erhöht? Diesen Fragen wird sich im Folgenden interdisziplinär und multiperspektivisch angenähert. Methodisch wird auf ein Scoping Review zurückgegriffen. Ausgehend von vergangenen und aktuell von der BAGSO vorrecherchierten Projekten und Modellvorhaben im Kontext von Digitalität und älteren Erwachsenen werden erste Gelingensbedingungen skizziert. Anschließend werden exemplarisch drei Modellvorhaben vorgestellt, die mehrere dieser Faktoren (u.a. Erfolgs- und Qualitätsfaktoren und Rahmenbedingungen) aufgreifen. Im Anschluss erfolgt eine Diskussion, um relevante Gelingensbedingungen und zukünftige Handlungsfelder explizit für Akteure, die Angebote für diese Zielgruppe bereitstellen, zu untersetzen. [Aus: Einleitung]

The number of scandals during the past years regarding the use and misuse of digital storage of personal infor-mation in combination with the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) within the EU member states, has resulted in a resurfaced discussion of sovereignty within the public sphere in relation to the storage of digital information. This master thesis examines the attitudes towards national data storage of personal data within twenty Swedish public agencies in the context of the analytical term Digital sovereignty.The thesis uses semi-structured interviews with employees working with data protection and qualitative con-tent analysis of internal documents connected to personal data management, in order to examine Swedish govern-ment agencies attitudes towards national data storage of personal information. The responses of the interviews and the internal policy documents in the area of personal data protections is viewed through the analytic term Digital sovereignty. The government agency the Swedish social security agency’s definition of Digital sovereignty is used in the thesis, which focuses on national governments ability to have control over both the technical and geograph-ical processing and storage of their citizen’s personal data.The thesis concludes that Swedish authorities takes the risk of transfer of personal data to third countries outside of the EU very seriously, while they also see the need to find legal ways to transfer personal data to these same countries. The thesis also concludes that Swedish government agencies try to avoid cloud services and are cautious in their use due to the implications they have for information and data security, while other research have shown that cloud services are used extensively within Swedish government agencies. The thesis also concludes that there is a lack of interest in national data storage of personal information within Swedish government, which can partially be attributed to the relationship between the General Data Protections Regulation and data storage regulation on a national level in Sweden. This leads to the final conclusion in this thesis, which is that there is some indication that the future of storage of personal data with the EU member states lies not in nationally managed cloud services, but rather in a federated cloud service on EU-level such as the currently ongoing project Gaia-X. This is a two years master's thesis in Archival science.