Jan Krewer

About Jan

Jan is the Senior Policy Analyst at Open Future. He boasts a decade of experience in policy analysis and design spanning both Europe and Africa. He is particularly interested in commons, data governance, and issues at the intersection of digital technologies and the environment.

Jan was born in Germany but grew up in France, where he studied political sciences and obtained a master’s degree in international public management. Fascinated by the potential of peer-to-peer networks, he started exploring how digital technologies transform global structures for information sharing and learning and became an avid reader of influential authors in digital studies, especially the economics of information.

As an analyst and later Deputy Secretary-General of the French Digital Council, Jan contributed to the initial development of a law that now provides a major legal framework for digital technology in France (Law for a Digital Republic), in particular on aspects related to the promotion of open access, open data, free software and the protection of the public domain. Jan was also involved in the Council’s work on EU data regulations and the artificial intelligence strategy for the French Presidency. Jan lived in Senegal and Rwanda for five years, learning from other cultural perspectives on digital technologies. He joined the Smart Africa Alliance as a strategic advisor to work on pan-African data protection and governance and the federation of digital identities.

Jan dedicates his writing and work to shedding light on the dehumanizing structures of the contemporary digital economy. In 2017, he lectured Sciences Po Paris students on the politics of the internet and has been a consistent publisher of policy papers discussing the potential of collective forms of ownership for society’s technological future. Jan’s collaborations on those issues include co-designing the Network of Open Resource Initiatives (NORI) for the German development agency (GIZ) and contributing to a unique partnership between GIZ and the Mozilla Foundation for community-driven collection of open voice data for AI-based solutions in East African languages. He recently participated in the “Africa Development Forum” series of the World Bank and French Development Agency, writing about how Digital Commons can promote sustainable local development.

Jan currently lives between The Hague and Paris. He loves to delve into philosophical concepts and discuss the richness of intercultural differences. Ask him why Saarland, the industrial haven of his childhood, has been Europe’s beating heart since Charlemagne, and you’re in for a long conversation.