Digital Sovereignty, European Union Data Governance, and the Political Economy of Nigerian Cyberspace

This doctoral study develops an original theoretical analysis of the intersection between European Union digital sovereignty initiatives, EU data governance frameworks, and the political economy of Nigerian cyberspace, arguing that EU digital governance choices produce significant but analytically neglected structural effects on the development trajectory of Nigeria's digital economy. The EU's strategic push for digital sovereignty, operationalised through the GDPR, the Data Governance Act, the Digital Markets Act, and the AI Act, represents a significant geopolitical and regulatory project whose effects on African digital economies have not been theorised at the doctoral level. Drawing on Bratton's theory of the Stack, Zuboff's surveillance capitalism critique, and the Political Economy of Communication, this study develops an original Digital Sovereignty Asymmetry Framework (DSAF) to theorise how EU digital governance architecture shapes power relations in EU-Nigeria digital interactions. Empirical analysis draws on a mixed-methods design including quantitative analysis of EU-Nigeria data flow dependencies, digital platform regulatory interactions, and cross-border data service trade data from 2019 to 2024. Primary fieldwork includes interviews with 50 participants: Nigerian digital economy entrepreneurs, data protection commissioners, EU digital policy officials, civil society digital rights advocates, and Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC) regulatory staff across Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt. Original contributions include the DSAF framework, an original analysis of EU digital governance's structural effects on Nigerian cyberspace, and a theoretically grounded digital sovereignty reform agenda for EU-Nigeria digital relations. Keywords: EU digital sovereignty, data governance, Nigerian cyberspace, digital political economy, GDPR.