The paper highlights how digitalisation and datafication has posed challenges for traditional tax revenue systems. However, the accelerated growth in digital services and e-commerce also presents new opportunities for Africas economy. The paper seeks to inform effective governance of global public goods from a developing country and regional lens, exploring the challenges and opportunities created by the digitalisation and datafication of Africas economy and the policy options for justly expanding the tax base for optimal state formation. Findings from the paper indicate that the stringent digital tax policies as currently applied on end-users within the continent rather than the global platforms as a means of appropriating location-specific rents within the digital economy, have the potential to lower affordability of online services as well as impede the fundamental human right of freedom of speech. While the paper is of the position that the emerging unilateral approaches to digital taxation in Africa can serve as a temporary gateway and a starting point to better grasp the value creation and capture dynamic of the digital economy, it has a significant disadvantage of risking a global impasse for global bilateral trade obligations.