Image Attribution: Yutong Liu / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Cooperative structures and systems are returning to the fore as a response to extractive data practices, the loss of digital rights, and exploitative labour modalities deployed by Big Tech companies. Last year marked the UN Year of Cooperatives, emphasising the opportunities it brings to driving sustainable development and equitable growth. In the digital realm, cooperativism offers pathways to collective ownership of data, ensuring that the value generated by the data returns to individuals and communities. To realise this opportunity, we need to explore further how we can embed cooperative systems and practices that are contextual, sustainable, and scalable.

As part of Aapti’s work on bottom-up stewardship, focused on synthesising best practices for community-led data governance mechanisms. One particular model we spotlighted was the data cooperative. Data cooperatives are technical and institutional layers which mediate data flows between those who generate data and those who use it. Aapti’s prior work in Brookings’ 17 Rooms engagement and handbook on How to Build a Data Cooperative, along with exploring the value proposition for Megha Mandli in Gujarat and supporting Enyorata Loviluku’s transition to a formal data cooperative in Tanzania, showed different ways in which data could create and improve economic opportunities for communities.

“Emerging economies need to ensure that digital transformations do not reduce citizens to users. Creating a rights-based digital ecosystem with pathways for negotiation and accountability, and enabling the governance of bottom-up structures such as cooperatives, allows individuals to negotiate power rather than make incremental changes to their online experience.”

— Astha Kapoor, Co-Founder and Director, Aapti Institute

Project Liberty Institute gathered data cooperative leading voices in a report focusing on how the data cooperative model could outperform today’s centralised data economy and what it needs to scale. The report includes case studies, authored by their founders and executive leaders, from across various sectors: from legacy cooperatives in agriculture and finance to emerging data cooperatives focused on digital art and online browsers.

Building on Project Liberty Institute and the Aapti Institute’s previous work on spotlighting data cooperative reports, handbooks, and community building, this initiative aims to expand both the scope and the depth of engagement with data cooperatives. By focusing specifically on Southeast Asia, the initiative seeks to gather real-world use cases that could inform data stewardship models worldwide.

“In the agentic AI age, data is the world’s most valuable resource — yet almost none of that value returns to the people who create it. Data cooperatives can change that and Asia has the energy, scale, and appetite for innovation to lead this shift. This initiative is about seizing that moment.”

— Jeb Bell, Executive Director, Project Liberty Institute

Southeast Asia has been recognised as a critical market for digital transformation. It was predicted that in 2025, the region’s digital economy would surpass $300 billion in gross merchandise value, 1.5 times the inaugural forecast 10 years ago. The region has a consumer base of 200 million new users that came online over the last digital decade, with three in five people now shopping online, and over 60% of all payments being digital. AI curiosity and consumer interest in AI topics are three times the global average. However, the region is also facing critical challenges related to the platform economy, climate change, and the inclusion of indigenous communities in the digital realm. As the region seizes opportunities, it must ensure that the most vulnerable are protected. Our previous work showcased archetypes of such efforts, particularly community technologies for climate action in India and Southeast Asia, and how they can be created, deployed, and scaled, along with the challenges they face. Our conversations highlighted how the initiatives navigated different aspects of digital systems and the support they receive—and need—from government institutions and beyond.

The project aims to take some of those conversations forward, strengthen the capacity of community-focused practitioners to understand, adapt to, and initiate data-cooperative models that enhance community data agency while enabling responsible public-good data use. There are four objectives we have:

• Spotlighting Cooperative Experiments: Introduce the concept of data cooperatives in accessible terms, showcasing previous case studies by organisations such as the Aapti Institute, the Project Liberty Institute, Open Data Manchester, People-Centered Internet, and others, including their governance structures, business models, value propositions, risks, and international examples.
• Moving from Theory to Practice: Engage practitioners to explore how data cooperatives could function within their specific business and community contexts.
• Contextualising and Conceptualising: Identify potential datasets communities could steward (e.g., environmental, health, mobility, social protection, agriculture), and discuss their potential community and public-good value.
• Understanding Modalities of Community Governance: Surface practical considerations for establishing a data cooperative – business models, governance needs, technical requirements, trust building, partnerships, and support structures.
• Creating a Global Community of Practice: Build a regional network of early champions and collaborators interested in piloting community-driven data stewardship approaches. Create bridges between the Data Cooperative Action Network, stewarded by the Project Liberty Institute, which is composed of data coop builders from Europe and North America.

Over the course of this project, we aim to hold three in-person roundtable discussions on data
cooperatives and bottom-up data stewardship in Bangkok, Manila and Jakarta. If you are working on data governance, community technologies, and data cooperatives and would like to participate in convenings, please write to us at [email protected] and [email protected].