An ordinary phone, left on a table, sends its location several times an hour to servers on another continent, without its owner being told. Purchases and journeys leave traces of the same kind, as do the messages people send; companies collect and resell them. As a candidate for the office of UN Secretary-General, President Macky Sall wants the protection of that data to stop being the privilege of a few regions of the world.

Privacy online, a recognised right. The United Nations reaffirmed as early as 2013 that this right applies online as it does offline. More than 130 countries today have a data law, and billions of people still live where no rule protects theirs.

The South's data, processed elsewhere. The information produced by the inhabitants of developing countries is often stored and exploited on other continents, under rules none of their parliaments voted. The bank statement of a trader in Kaolack may sit on a server in Virginia, under a law whose very existence is unknown to him. A country's public services and security depend on that same data, and it loses control of them once the data is processed beyond its borders.

Common rules rather than a mosaic. When each region writes its own law, companies choose the weakest. A global convergence on principles such as consent and the right of access would protect everyone without freezing innovation.

The Global Digital Compact. Data law belongs to parliaments, but the Compact gives a Secretary-General a forum in which to bring national rules closer together. The 2013 resolution gives him the ground on which to state before every government and every company that privacy is a right of the person, wherever she lives. Convergence will be measured at the Compact's follow-up, which returns to the General Assembly at regular intervals.

A convergence to negotiate. Bringing national laws together takes experience of negotiation: that of twelve years as head of state and the chairmanship of the African Union in 2022. The same experience explains why the vision statement filed with the United Nations frames its proposals as obligations: peace, security and development conceived together; a renewed multilateralism; stronger governance of the Organization.

Africa at its heart, the world in its sights.

The 2013 General Assembly resolution on the right to privacy in the digital age and the Global Digital Compact are public. Read all public positions at www.mackysall.net