TECHINSIGHT

Can Blockchain Help Farmers Get a Fair Deal? In the global economy, data flows faster than goods. Yet behind every product on our shelves, there is a long and often invisible supply chain, particularly in agriculture. Smallholder farmers in developing countries—who grow most of the world’s coffee, cocoa, and rice—frequently receive just a fraction of the final retail price. Their work fuels global consumption, yet their lives remain vulnerable to fluctuating market conditions and opaque pricing structures. In response, blockchain technology is emerging as a tool that promises to enhance traceability and trust, while potentially reshaping the fairness of agricultural trade. To understand its potential, it is important to define what blockchain is. Fundamentally, blockchain is a decentralized, tamper-resistant digital ledger. Unlike traditional databases, which are controlled by a central authority, blockchain distributes data across a network of computers, or nodes, where each transacti...

    When Infrastructure Becomes Influence Who Controls Data in the Cloud In September 2023, Chinese tech giant Huawei opened a major cloud data center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and its first in the Middle East and North Africa. At first glance, this move appears to be a straightforward step in Huawei’s global expansion and Saudi Arabia’s digital modernization. But behind the sleek headlines lies a deeper and more complex issue which is  data sovereignty in the age of foreign-controlled cloud infrastructure . As China invests aggressively in building the digital backbone of developing nations, it raises a critical question, 'Can a country truly be sovereign if it doesn’t control the platforms where its data lives?' Data so vereignty  refers to the idea that data is subject to the laws of the country in which it is generated and stored ( Hummel et al., 2021 ). In practice, however, data sovereignty is difficult to maintain when cloud services—critical to digital transfo...