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  "path": "/t/digital-colonialism-u-s-demands-to-access-africans-data-raise-privacy-sovereignty-concerns/38605#post_1",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-18T13:33:18.000Z",
  "site": "https://discuss.privacyguides.net",
  "tags": [
    "ProPublica – 17 Jun 26",
    "“Digital Colonialism”: U.S. Demands to Access Africans’ Data Raise Privacy,...",
    "dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)",
    "America First Global Health Strategy",
    "dismantled USAID",
    "pandemic agreement",
    "YouTube",
    "What Really Happened When USAID Was Cut",
    "gold",
    "worth billions",
    "have",
    "sounded",
    "alarms",
    "unauthorized access to personal data abound",
    "listed for sale on the Chinese website Alibaba",
    "violence",
    "individuals in “anonymized” data can be reidentified",
    "AI and other tools",
    "weighed in on their side",
    "prioritizing funding for Christian faith-based health facilities"
  ],
  "textContent": "ProPublica – 17 Jun 26\n\n### “Digital Colonialism”: U.S. Demands to Access Africans’ Data Raise Privacy,...\n\nThe United States is requiring access to health data as part of lifesaving aid deals with African countries. The U.S. says the data will be aggregated and anonymized, but privacy experts fear the information could be misused or exploited.\n\nEst. reading time: 16 minutes\n\n**TL:DR:**\n\n>   1. _**Strings Attached:** U.S. officials are demanding access to the health data of millions of Africans as a condition of giving billions of dollars in lifesaving aid to African countries._\n>\n>   2. _**Privacy Concerns:** Experts said the deals are vague and lack standard language to guard personal data from being exposed, misused or commercialized without people’s consent._\n>\n>   3. _**America First:** The U.S. said it needs access to the data to keep people safe and that it will be anonymized. The deals are part of a plan to use aid to make America “more prosperous.”_\n>\n>\n\n\n**MORE DETAILS:**\n\n> Across Africa, countries have faced similar dilemmas as the U.S. has held a series of closed-door negotiations in which lifesaving aid has been conditioned on access to citizens’ health data. The negotiations come in the wake of the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which — in contrast with the new contracts — provided billions of dollars in aid with few strings attached. Officials in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Ghana have been so outraged by the demands that they rejected the initial deals.\n\n> The demand to access health data is central to the Trump administration’s new America First Global Health Strategy, an openly transactional approach that seeks to leverage the desperate need for medical treatments abroad.\n\n> […] a ProPublica analysis of nine of the deals offers a window into the extensive U.S. demands for access to data — and the potential risks and vulnerabilities for the citizens of countries that have signed them.\n\n> The terms of the deals are vague and lack language standard in most data-sharing agreements that adequately limits what data is collected and how it can be used. That increases the risk that individuals’ personal data could be exposed, misused or commercialized without their consent.\n\n> At particular risk are countries that don’t have national data privacy laws, such as Liberia, whose memorandum of understanding requires “interlinked and interoperable” data systems for “surveillance, laboratory, response, health, environment, agriculture.” That country’s main health agreement doesn’t require the U.S. to limit the amount of data it takes to the least needed, a standard clause in U.S. contracts, according to Abdoul Jalil Djiberou Mahamadou, a recent postdoctoral fellow focusing on bioethics at Stanford University.\n\n**BACKGROUND CONTEXT:**\n\n> After withdrawing from the World Health Organization and losing access to its global network that tracks and combats disease outbreaks, the U.S. is attempting to obtain the information necessary to address potential pandemics through a patchwork of deals with individual countries.\n\n> After the Trump administration dismantled USAID, the world’s largest provider of humanitarian assistance, it also drastically reduced funding for international health work done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and severely scaled back the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which combats HIV globally.\n>\n> In addition to withdrawing from the WHO, the U.S. removed itself from international negotiations over a pandemic agreement intended to affirm countries’ sovereign rights to their biological resources and ensure equitable access to medical interventions.\n\nIf you want to understand the consequences of the US’s dismantling of USAID and fund cutting of its public health agencies, I highly recommend ProPublica’s news report below:\n\nYouTube\n\n### What Really Happened When USAID Was Cut\n\nAn American-made hunger crisis. A worsening cholera epidemic. Last summer, reporters Brett Murphy and Anna Barry-Jester journeyed to refugee camps in Kenya a...\n\n**Profit appears to be a core motive**\n\n> In the age of artificial intelligence, large health data sets have become so valuable they’ve been referred to as the new gold. The precise value of the health data of an entire nation is unclear, but it could be extremely valuable to AI-driven companies for training models.The industry of buying and selling such information troves is worth billions.\n\n**AFRICAN PERSPECTIVES:**\n\n> “If you take the deal, you’re going to be exploited. If you don’t take it, you’re going to die,” said Ssekamwa, an attorney and digital rights expert in Uganda. “It’s the essence of digital colonialism.”\n\n> […] groups across Africa have sounded alarms about dangers inherent in these provisions, including data breaches. Examples of such unauthorized access to personal data abound, including a recent case where the healthcare data of some 500,000 participants in the UK Biobank wound up listed for sale on the Chinese website Alibaba.\n\n> Revealing whether someone has had an abortion, mental health condition, substance use treatment or sexually transmitted disease can be devastating anywhere. In Africa, research has shown it can lead to discrimination and violence. And even when personal information has been removed, individuals in “anonymized” data can be reidentified using AI and other tools.\n\n> […] a Kenyan senator named Okiya Omtatah sued members of the Kenyan government over the agreement, arguing that it poses a threat to citizens’ constitutional right to privacy by “allowing broad foreign access to sensitive data.” A Kenyan nonprofit also sued, and more than 50 groups weighed in on their side, describing the document as giving the U.S. “excessive access” to African data and raising the possibility of serious human rights violations.\n\n> “Why are they hiding the agreement if they think the terms are OK?” asked Bernard Okpi, a Nigerian lawyer who sued his government in March, alleging that the deal violates the country’s constitutional right to privacy and promotes religious discrimination by prioritizing funding for Christian faith-based health facilities.",
  "title": "Digital Colonialism: U.S. Demands to Access Africans’ Data Raise Privacy & Sovereignty Concerns"
}