A growing number of researchers have focused on Africa’s capabilities in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Some scholars have analyzed the impacts of mobile internet and broadband on the continent, while others have researched initiatives such as smart cities and the implications of the 4IR on development and manufacturing. Others have touched on the opportunities present in African development and the types of innovation that are already present or can take place. After reviewing the literature, the chapter dives into five critical domains on which the 4IR will change African states, industries, and society. These five domains are economic growth and structural transformation; labor, skills, production; poverty and inequality; power and governance; and peace and security. The chapter concludes with the five key domain summaries and strategies that can be employed in Africa.

The chapter ’Going on Pawtrol’ describes how to conduct linguistic research using the cat examples from the original research done for this book. It looks at methodological issues, like research design, research methods, sampling methods, data collection, wordlists, and surveys. The chapter also discusses ethics in relation to the protection of research participants and the research, touching on the laws in place to protect people’s privacy and data and the ethical guidelines established for researchers.

Policymakers in the EU have debated whether the digital economy may benefit from the introduction of data ownership and data access rights. The chapter asks whether and how the concepts of data ownership and data access rights may serve the goal of establishing an adequate free flow of data in the digital single market.

It first maps the policy goals contained within the EU’s Digital Single Market Strategy and then analyzes how data ownership – understood as a property right – may serve the implementation of this strategy.

The conclusion is that data ownership is unlikely to further the establishment of an adequate free flow of data. Therefore, the chapter examines whether ownership, understood as control over personal data, is a viable alternative to the property rights approach.

As a final step, the question is examined if, and under what circumstances, access rights to data already exist, or should be introduced, to allow individuals and businesses to use both personal and non-personal data.

This chapter examines the new role of data in trade and explores how trade in data differs from trade in goods and services. It argues that data is different and may need a distinct set of rules. The chapter explores several analogies used by analysts to describe data as an input, which can help understand how data could be regulated.

Many executives and policymakers argue that trade agreements are the appropriate venue to govern cross-border data flows. The chapter discusses how trade policy-makers are regulating trade in data and how these efforts have created a regulatory patchwork.

Finally, an alternative approach is suggested, noting that any agreement must be built by and for the people whose data serve as its foundation. Before trade negotiators try to develop rules regarding cross-border data flows, they must acknowledge the special character of data and focus first on creating an effective enabling environment and building trust in that new economy by empowering people around the world to control their data.

This is an introduction to the discourse of digital trade governance that discusses the challenges of legal adaptaton in the era of big data. It provides the backdrop of the book's analyses, explains the concept and the structure of the book, and introduces the individual chapters.

The public debate about smart contracts, meant as self-help remedies grounded on distributed ledger technology, is filled with alarms and high expectations. They have been praised by the tech community as infallible software able to carry out the whole contractual cycle, from formation to enforcement. Conversely, several legal scholars have raised concerns regarding both smart contracts’ inability to reflect relational aspects of contract governance and the augmented complexity generated by the translation of an agreement into computer code. The chapter focuses the discussion on the potential areas which could effectively benefit from implementation of smart contracts. Firstly, it argues that smart contracts might be a viable tool to tackle effectively consumers’ inertia in triggering and enforcing their rights which are standardized and easily verifiable. Secondly, smart contracts have the potential to foster commercial relationships by lowering down transaction costs arising from lack of trust between merchants. Thus, smart contracts are likely to provide better alternatives to traditional tools of business practice, such as letters of credit and escrow agreements.