This article analyses how Teju Cole’s Every Day is for the Thief (2014) redefines digital literacy in development contexts, challenging policy models that equate device access with empowerment. Using postcolonial theory — Madhu Krishnan’s “reverse ethnography” — and Jan van Dijk’s “digital divide 2.0”, the study shows that infrastructure quality and strategic skills, not just devices, shape technological empowerment. Cole anticipates debates on AI data bias and infrastructure gaps through a tripartite framework: 1) Critical literacy: the narrator’s camera acts as citizen-archiving and data sovereignty, prefiguring AI training debates. 2) Infrastructure-backed literacy: Lagos’ generators reveal the deficit ignored by device-first policies, making SDG 7 and 9 preconditions for SDG 4.4. 3) Ethical literacy: the novel’s “boys with phones” show how weak institutions turn tech into tools for surveillance and extraction, requiring digital citizenship and privacy. Cole repositions digital literacy as critical, powered, and ethical. For policymakers, SDGs 4, 7, 9, and 16 must be integrated. For literary scholars, African fiction serves as development data, capturing lived experiences of infrastructure failure that statistics miss.