The ‘Digital Transformation for Development’ Anti‐Politics Machine: A Case Study on Global Digital Development Governance and Public‐Sector Digital Transformation in Uganda

ABSTRACT Hegemonic digital transformation for development (DX4D) initiatives, global digital development initiatives concerning the public sector, function as a contemporary ‘anti‐politics machine’. This is evidenced by the global extractive and surveillant dynamics surrounding these initiatives' core projects, such as digital public infrastructures. Despite being a global policy initiative focusing on bureaucratic reform and infrastructural development, hegemonic DX4D initiatives are usually presented as technocratic and depoliticised transformations, obscuring the value‐extractive dynamics, network paradigms, infrastructural control mechanisms emerging around them, especially concerning digital sovereignty. The DX4D anti‐politics machine refers to depoliticised and value‐extractive global digital development policy initiatives extending the bureaucratic reach of state and non‐state actors into public systems while obscuring global hegemonic actors' advancement of infrastructural ideologies and use of coercive mechanisms to supplant the strategic interests of powerful global actors over the public value. The ‘DX4D anti‐politics machine' concept examines how infrastructural ideologies are operationalised through global development and humanitarian initiatives with implications for governments, governance, and well‐being. The ‘DX4D anti‐politics machine’ is empirically examined through a qualitative case study of several large‐scale foundational DX4D projects in Uganda. The DX4D anti‐politics machine's coercive dynamics and implications for many Global South countries are examined, and its conceptual contribution is discussed.