Digital Sovereignty: Framing, Legitimacy, and Global Positioning in Ethiopian Digital Governance

Digital sovereignty has become a prime mover concept in contemporary digital governance as governments seek to strengthen their authority over digital infrastructures, data, cybersecurity, and emerging technologies. Existing scholarship further examined digital sovereignty from legal, technological, and geopolitical perspectives. However, limited research has explored how governments construct and articulate digital sovereignty through official policy discourse, particularly in African contexts. This study addresses this gap by examining the discursive construction of digital sovereignty within Ethiopian digital governance discourse in the year between 2019 and 2025. The study employs a qualitative research design based on discourse analysis of eighteen official government documents, including national digital strategies, policy frameworks, legislative instruments, regulatory documents, and official speeches. An integrated analytical framework combining Framing Theory, Legitimation Theory, Positioning Theory, and Santaniello's digital sovereignty attributes was used to analyze how digital sovereignty is framed, how state intervention is legitimized, and how Ethiopia is positioned within regional and global digital governance debates. The findings show that digital sovereignty is predominantly framed as a development-oriented project supported by narratives of state capacity building, governance, cybersecurity, and strategic autonomy. Government discourse legitimizes state intervention through development, security, public interest, and strategic necessity, while positioning Ethiopia as an emerging digital economy, a developmental state, a regional leader, and a collaborative global partner. The study contributes empirical evidence from Ethiopia and demonstrates the value of a discourse-oriented approach for understanding how governments construct and communicate digital sovereignty through official policy discourse. Keywords: Digital sovereignty; digital governance; discourse analysis; framing; legitimation; positioning; Ethiopia.