Speaker
Description
E, O. F.
Federal College of Education (Technical) Ekiadolor, Benin-City, Edo State
omonuwafred2011@gmail.com
Track: Research, Innovation and Knowledge Ecosystems
Despite unprecedented global digital expansion, current approaches to closing the digital divide remain fundamentally insufficient. Mainstream interventions narrowly focus on infrastructure connectivity, treating inclusion as a technical problem of extending networks rather than a structural problem of re-configuring power, design, and governance. This paper argues that achieving genuine digital equity requires a paradigm shift from a charity model to a treaty model. This paper examines three persistent failures of current digital inclusion efforts which include the innovation without accountability trap, the participation-washing problem, and the equity measurement vacuum. The study advanced a concrete alternative, an ecosystem-in-action model that integrates community-based participatory research, frugal innovation sprints, and open knowledge repositories. The paper further argues that the digital treaty must be enforceable, not aspirational. The research proposed binding accountability mechanisms, including sunset clauses for non-inclusive digital services, community veto power over data extraction, and publicly funded digital equity impact assessments as prerequisites for government technology procurement.
Without a treaty framework, the study concluded that digital transformation will continue to replicate and deepen existing inequalities, offering faster pathways to privilege while leaving the structurally excluded further behind.