# Data Sovereignty & Mandatory Transparency

In information governance, does the control and accessibility of clinical trial data generated in Africa meet standards for data sovereignty? This audit evaluated 23,873 African trials on ClinicalTrials.gov for results reporting, data sharing plans, and institutional data control indicators through March 2026. Investigators reported the results-reporting rate and data-sharing compliance as primary estimands for data sovereignty. Among 13,918 completed African trials, an estimated thirty percent had not reported results on the registry, compared to approximately twenty percent in the United States. Fewer than ten percent of African trials included explicit individual participant data sharing plans compared to fifteen percent globally. Data generated by African participants is overwhelmingly stored and analysed at Northern institutions, with local researchers often lacking access to datasets from trials conducted in their own communities. These findings reveal a data sovereignty crisis where Africa exports raw data and imports finished publications. Interpretation is limited by voluntary disclosure of data-sharing intentions.

## References

1. de Vries J, et al. ""; returning"; individual research results in Africa." Nat Genet. 2012;44:370-374.
2. African Union. "Africa Health Strategy 2016-2030." AU Commission, Addis Ababa.
3. ClinicalTrials.gov API v2 Documentation. U.S. National Library of Medicine.

## Note Block

- Type: research
- App: https://mahmood726-cyber.github.io/africa-e156-students/governance-justice/dashboards/data-sovereignty.html
- Code: https://github.com/mahmood726-cyber/africa-e156-students/blob/master/governance-justice/code/data-sovereignty.py
- Data: ClinicalTrials.gov API v2
- Date: 2026-04-05