Futuristic robotic hand touching a digital network on a blue background. by Tara Winstead via pexels
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An 18th SDG? Technological sovereignty and digital justice
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When the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted in 2015, they gave the world one of the most ambitious frameworks for shared development in modern history. The 17 goals created a common language for poverty, hunger, health, education, gender equality, water, energy, work, infrastructure, inequality, climate action, peace and partnerships.
But the world of 2026 is not the world of 2015.
Artificial intelligence now shapes education, research, public administration, labour markets, health systems and democratic debate. Cloud infrastructure has become as strategically important as physical infrastructure. Data has become a source of economic power. Digital platforms increasingly mediate how societies learn, trade, communicate, govern and form political opinion. Cybersecurity is now a daily concern for universities, hospitals, municipalities and states.
The SDGs remain important. But as the world begins to think beyond 2030, it must confront a difficult question: can any country achieve sustainable development if it lacks the capacity to understand, govern, produce, and benefit from the technologies that increasingly determine its future?
This is why the world needs a serious conversation about the 18th SDG: technological sovereignty and digital justice – in particular in Africa and the Global South.
Technology is a field of power
This is not a call to multiply global slogans. It is a call to recognise that technology has become the operating system of development itself. Education, health, agriculture, energy, climate adaptation, industrialisation, public finance and governance are now mediated by digital systems, artificial intelligence, data infrastructure and advanced technologies. A development framework that treats technology only as an enabler, rather than as a field of power, dependency and justice, is incomplete.
Several proposals for an 18th SDG have already emerged. Some have argued for universal communication. Others have proposed responsible and inclusive artificial intelligence, digital technology, animal welfare, space sustainability, or ethnic-racial equality as possible missing goals.
These proposals are important because they reveal a wider truth: the 2015 SDG framework is now under pressure from realities that have intensified since its adoption. My argument is that the most comprehensive missing goal is technological sovereignty and digital justice, particularly for the Global South.
Technology in the list of 17
Technology is not absent from the existing SDGs. SDG 9 already speaks to industry, innovation and infrastructure. Other goals also refer to science, innovation, data, energy systems, education technologies and partnerships. But technological sovereignty, artificial intelligence governance, data justice, cybersecurity resilience and domestic innovation capability are not treated as development goals in their own right. That is the gap.
For Africa and the Global South, this issue is urgent. Many universities teach through foreign platforms, store research data in external cloud systems, rely on imported laboratory equipment, use artificial intelligence tools designed elsewhere, and depend on digital architectures over which they have limited control.
Many governments procure digital systems without building domestic capability. Many countries generate vast quantities of data without having sufficient sovereign infrastructure, technical expertise or regulatory capacity to govern that data in the long-term public interest.
This creates a new development divide. It is no longer only a divide between those with and without access to technology. It is a divide between those who design technology and those who merely consume it; between those who own data infrastructure and those who supply data; between those who govern artificial intelligence and those who are governed by it.
An 18th SDG should, therefore, be framed as follows: ensure equitable technological sovereignty, responsible artificial intelligence, data justice and inclusive innovation capacity for all nations.
Technological sovereignty
Such a goal would not promote technological isolation. Sovereignty does not mean autarky or withdrawal from global cooperation. It means the ability to participate in global systems with dignity, capability and bargaining power. It means that developing countries should not be permanent consumers of technologies designed elsewhere, but co-creators of the technological future.
Higher education must be central to this agenda. Universities cannot remain observers of technological dependence. They must become engines of technological capability. This means producing, not only graduates and publications, but also prototypes, patents, start-ups, open technologies, local platforms, community innovations, industrial partnerships and public-interest research.
Universities of technology play a particularly important role. Their mandate is applied knowledge, problem-solving, industry engagement and social innovation. They are well placed to translate technological sovereignty into practical development outcomes, including medical devices, clean energy systems, water technologies, agricultural tools, digital public infrastructure, cybersecurity capacity, smart manufacturing, and inclusive entrepreneurship.
But this requires a shift in how governments, funding agencies and universities define impact. Research systems often reward publications more easily than prototypes. They measure journal outputs more consistently than technology transfer.
They celebrate international collaboration but do not always ask whether it builds local capability. They encourage innovation rhetoric but underfund the laboratories, workshops, testing platforms, and commercialisation pathways required to move ideas into products.
An 18th SDG would help correct this imbalance. It would give countries, universities and development agencies a language for measuring technological capability as a development outcome. It would ask whether a country can build, maintain, adapt and govern the technologies on which its development depends.
The proposed SDG 18 should include measurable targets: affordable and secure digital infrastructure; responsible AI governance; national data protection and data sovereignty frameworks; cybersecurity readiness; local language inclusion in digital systems; investment in research and development; technology transfer; local manufacturing of critical technologies; support for university-based innovation; and fair participation of developing countries in global technology governance.
The United Nations has already recognised the importance of digital cooperation through the Global Digital Compact. That is a positive step. But a compact is not the same as a goal. A compact can guide cooperation; a goal shapes measurement, accountability, funding, institutional behaviour and political priority.
Existing goals depend on technology
The SDGs matter because they tell the world what to count. If technological sovereignty is not counted, it will remain peripheral. If digital justice is not measured, it will remain rhetorical. If innovation capacity in the Global South is not treated as a development priority, the world will continue to reproduce dependency while speaking the language of partnership.
The world does not need an 18th SDG as if the existing 17 were already irrelevant. It needs one because the existing goals are increasingly dependent on technology.
Health systems depend on diagnostics, data and medical technologies. Education depends on connectivity and learning platforms. Agriculture depends on sensors, climate intelligence and logistics systems. Climate adaptation depends on modelling, satellites and early-warning tools. Governance depends on secure information systems. Work depends on digital skills and readiness for automation.
Technological sovereignty is, therefore, not a separate development concern. It is becoming the foundation for many existing goals.
The SDGs promised that no one should be left behind. In the 21st century, those most likely to be left behind are countries, communities and institutions that are locked out of the technologies that define the future.
The world needs an 18th SDG. It should be technological sovereignty and digital justice.
Professor Fulufhelo Nemavhola is the deputy vice-chancellor for research, innovation, and engagement at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) in South Africa.
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