Digital Governance in 2026: The Key Shifts Shaping Technology, Security and Global Power

Across economies and regions, governments are grappling with how to govern emerging technologies, protect critical digital infrastructure and navigate a more fragmented geopolitical environment. In that context, four CIGI experts examine the shifts most likely to shape governance in the year ahead.

Africa’s Shifting Political Alignments and Partnerships

In 2026, African policy leadership will build on strong momentum following South Africa’s G20 presidency and robust techno-diplomacy with the Think 20, Business 20, Civil Society 20 and other fora. Following the African Union’s 2024 Continental Artificial Intelligence Strategy, the past year saw additional continental leadership under the 2025 Africa Declaration on Artificial Intelligence implemented through the Africa AI Council.

Much of this effort will continue to be driven by ambitions for inclusive growth and service provision through expanded digital public infrastructure. At the same time, reducing harms remains a focus, including from the violent exploitation of critical minerals used in technological development. In fact, many African scholars now point to the political philosophy of Ubuntu, advocating meaningful regulation grounded in African values of mutual accountability.

African techno-diplomacy is the foreground of a globally complex picture as well, with digital partnerships serving as a major theatre for geopolitical strategic behaviour. However, the rivalry between China and the United States has also shifted. The second Trump administration has been marked by large-scale US withdrawal, including the closure of the US Agency for International Development and the cancellation of significant US support for Africa’s digital transformation. In 2026, this leaves a significant investment gap that could lead to increased continental debt and economic inequality. India and China remain engaged, while African players are, in other cases, looking for alternative partnerships, seeing this geopolitical landscape as too volatile.

African policy leadership in 2026 becomes critically important. Leaders will need to chart a course for the continent’s digital transformation that leverages partnership with agency, leading with ethics and homegrown standards.

Emerging Technologies

Technology will gain further prominence in 2026 as a strategic lever for advancing intertwined economic, security and geopolitical objectives. AI, quantum and other emerging technologies are transforming society, while governance remains largely reactive and the private sector asserts itself as the new power broker. The stakes are higher than ever before to ensure technology equitably and securely serves humanity.

While technology rapidly advances, science is under pressure. This is especially true in critical technology domains where increasing restrictions on mobility and trade, fragmented collaboration, and the politicization of evidence (with direct implications for global trust) challenge the foundations of research.

Countries are increasingly driving emerging technology development through “arms race” dynamics — rivalrous military capability building — as they compete to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace and on the battlefield. At the same time, governments are boosting defence spending while the definitions and interpretations of “emerging,” “sovereign” and “dual use” remain unclear. Such ambiguity may serve concealed interests in mercantilist diplomacy and dilute the efficacy of dual-use investment.

Watch out for increasing use of non-traditional “anticipatory” governance tools to manage risk and navigate rapid change, such as AI for strategic foresight, algorithmic governance and AI-powered causal insights for policy design. In response to these dynamics, policy makers and technology leaders should institutionalize foresight: continuously map emerging capabilities, update risk scenarios and stress-test relevant frameworks against them.

Digitalization of the Global Economy

Geopolitics will again set the strategic landscape in 2026. International institutions will struggle to gain traction as major powers prioritize national interests and as the United States continues to push changes that further strain a fraying international order. Most economies now face an acute challenge to balance sovereignty with the benefits of openness in trade, migration, technology and investment while staying aligned with allies.

Economic security will increasingly hinge on control of digital and technological infrastructure. Data, cloud services, computing power, digital identity systems, semiconductors and trusted networks will be increasingly treated as paramount strategic assets. The result will be more localized infrastructure, tighter public–private coordination and more frequent regulatory spillovers across borders. Countries may rely more on minilateral arrangements and mutual recognition efforts, even as competition over global standards-setting intensifies.

Digital currency policy and competition will spike in 2026. The United States will push US dollar–pegged stablecoins (privately issued digital currency on blockchain) to reinforce dollar primacy and support demand for US treasuries. Meanwhile, China will push the digital yuan (central bank–issued) to deepen adoption across its trading ecosystem and embed influence in the global financial system.

Though not yet fully priced into policy planning, the US Securities and Exchange Commission has approved tokenized stocks and bonds to begin trading in 2026, including 24/7 trading markets. This opens a new door to broader tokenization of many real-world assets that are still largely paper-based, including real estate. Policy debates are shifting to implementation-level infrastructure contests over blockchains, payment systems, and rules on governing identity, security and interoperability.

Cybersecurity and Space

The global economy now runs on systems that are simultaneously digital, orbital and highly interdependent. As more critical services, from broadband connectivity to climate monitoring, financial transactions and national security operations, come to depend on satellites, the boundaries between cyber vulnerabilities and space risks have effectively collapsed.

Two developments will shape governance in this space in the year ahead. First, commercial mega-constellations — massive networks of satellites orbiting Earth and functioning as single systems — will continue to expand rapidly, creating unprecedented resilience but also raising systemic risks. In this way, a single cyber intrusion into ground-based controls or supply chains could have cascading global consequences. Second, geopolitical tensions are increasingly playing out in orbit, with states probing, jamming and interfering with each other’s space assets while operating in a legal environment still rooted in the 1960s.

To address this widening governance gap in 2026, governments, industry leaders and international organizations must urgently establish credible, enforceable norms around cybersecure satellite operations, responsible behaviour in orbit and information sharing across jurisdictions. Without immediate, globally coordinated action, cyberspace and outer space will become arenas of strategic instability rather than engines of global innovation.