Digital power is concentrated. Its costs are widely spread.
⚡
Women's work disappears from tax records
Platform algorithms systematically exclude care and informal labour from fiscal recognition — most of it done by women in the Global South
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Governments are giving away billions
Data centre tax incentives drain public revenue across Africa with little scrutiny, weakening the very states meant to govern digital infrastructure
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The rules are written elsewhere
International norms on digital taxation and tech governance are shaped without African voices — TERRA puts Global South research at the centre of that debate
Where TERRA Intervenes
Who makes the rules of the digital economy? And where does the Global South sit in that process?
Rule-Making Arena
Fiscal & Tax Governance
OECD, UN, treaty bodies
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African states negotiate without evidence on revenue lost to data centre tax incentives — they give billions away and cannot measure the cost
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TERRA maps fiscal revenue foregone across Africa and builds the evidence base for principled negotiation
Rule-Making Arena
Platform & Algorithmic Governance
Big Tech, gig platforms
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Algorithms classify women's care and informal labour as non-taxable — rendering it invisible to fiscal systems without scrutiny or redress
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TERRA audits app-based platforms for algorithmic gender bias and documents the fiscal cost of that invisibility
Rule-Making Arena
Regulatory Framework Design
Governments, regulators
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Regulatory sandboxes are adopted without African evidence — deferring accountability rather than enabling it, and importing Northern governance assumptions
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TERRA designs and tests a Kenya-based Data Centre Risk Assessment Sandbox grounded in African regulatory realities
The Global South does not lack knowledge. It lacks a research infrastructure that makes that knowledge count. TERRA is that infrastructure.
Three Research Pillars
What TERRA investigates
01
Algorithmic Gender Bias
How algorithms make women's labour invisible to tax systems
02
Data Centre Fiscal Impact
Measuring revenue lost to data centre tax incentives across Africa
03
Regulatory Sandbox Design
Testing whether sandboxes enable proactive governance or defer accountability
Luminate Funding$200,000·Programme2026 – 2027
What We Are Building
Research you can touch, tools you can use
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App Investigations
We audit the platforms
We investigate gig and domestic work apps to expose how their algorithms make women's labour fiscally invisible to tax systems and governments.
⚡ Live case studies
Regulatory Sandbox
We build the governance lab
A first-of-its-kind Data Centre Risk Assessment Sandbox for Kenya — letting regulators test fiscal and environmental accountability frameworks before they become law.
🧪 Live in Kenya
🗺
Interactive Maps
We map the money
Publicly accessible tools showing data centres worldwide, tax incentives governments offer them, critical mineral supply chains, and revenue foregone — putting credible data in everyone's hands.
🌍 Open to the world
Wait — what does TERRA actually stand for?
Glad you asked. Buckle up. 🚀
T
Tech (the big, messy, extractive kind)
Data centres, platforms, cables under the ocean, algorithms deciding whose labour counts. We follow every watt, every wire, every dollar quietly leaving the continent.
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E
Equality (non-negotiable, always, full stop)
Especially when women's care work vanishes into thin fiscal air without so much as a tax receipt. We make the invisible visible. We do not apologise for this.
⚖️
RR
Regulatory Risk (yes, two R's — deal with it)
Someone has to ask who is accountable when the sandbox becomes a black box. Turns out that someone is us. You're welcome, regulators.
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A
Assessment (not vibes. never vibes.)
Evidence so sharp it cuts through borrowed frameworks and excuses dressed up as policy. Data. Accountability. Global South voice. In that order.
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Put it all together? TERRA.Now you really, truly know. 🌍
Welcome to
Project
TERRA
Tech · Equality · Regulatory Risk Assessment
Where research becomes governance.
Where data becomes accountability.
Where the Global South shapes the rules.