Prof. Sharifah Sekalala and Dr. Tatenda Chatikobo (Warwick Law)

Globally, there has been increased attention on digitalising health systems, and in the Global South, digitisation is perceived as instrumental in advancing health access and achieving developmental goals. Critical scholarship has paid attention to the capitalist logic of accumulation in digital technologies and drawn parallels to historical colonialism (see Kwet, 2021; Coleman, 2019; Couldry and Mejias, 20218). However, there are still some scholarly gaps, specifically in understanding the ways in which post-colonial spaces embedded legalities within health systems have promoted domination and oppression particularly in health. In this paper, we interrogate the ways in which digital health’s physical, non-physical and normative infrastructures such as regulatory frameworks (and lack thereof) enable and amplify exploitative, extractive and violent practices as enduring structures of coloniality in space and time. We use the case of Discovery and its Vitality programme to illustrate the ways historical post-apartheid policies served as a pre-configuration of existing digital health infrastructures and resulting inequalities. As post-colonial states grapple with legacies and the neo-neoliberal turn that has created winners and losers, we explore whether law provide a more equitable, restorative and transformative path to digital health?

Moderator: Prof. Celia Lury