Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) has launched a new Africa Strategy dedicated, among other goals, to ‘lend[ing] structural support to the achievement of the development goals set by the African Union (AU) and its member states’.
Titled ‘Shaping the future with Africa’, the strategy notes that Germany’s cooperation with Africa will be based on respect and reciprocity, and anchored into Africa’s priorities and initiatives. Moreover, ‘the BMZ wants to engage in a dialogue with Africa rather than about Africa. It advocates for the voices of African states and the AU to be heard appropriately within multilateral fora.’
Digital transformation features among the focus areas for development cooperation (as part of a broader cluster titled ’employment, fair trade, migration and digital transformation’). First and foremost, Germany intends to contribute to the growth of digital economies across Africa by providing support in areas such as (a) enhancing relevant economic and political frameworks; (b) creating digital markets; (c) enabling secure, universal internet access and bridging digital divides; (d) fostering legal standards and data privacy regulations; (d) stimulating the creation of jobs in the ICT sector. Mobilising investments in digital infrastructures and supporting the implementation of the African Common Free Trade Area are also envisioned.
But supporting digital transformation across Africa relates to more than the digital economy. BMZ will also be directing its development cooperation towards supporting (a) enhancing women’s economic participation, including through providing training for women with a special focus on digital expertise; (b) the digitalisation of healthcare; and (c) the digitalisation of the public sector and the use of digital technology to strengthen political participation.
The European Commission has awarded Spanish telecommunications company Celnex six projects for the deployment of 5G infrastructure across cross-border transport corridors.
Four projects will involve works covering two road corridors linking Spain with France (Barcelona – Montpellier/Toulouse and Bilbao – Bordeaux) and two corridors linking Spain with Portugal (Salamanca – Porto – Vigo and Mérida – Évora). Cellnex plans to work with mobile operators to deploy 34 new telecommunication sites, with the overall goal of providing 5G connectivity to over 1,400km of the four cross-border corridors.
These projects are part of the European Commission’s Connecting Europe Facility (CEF-2) Digital programme and will represent an overall investment of €24 million, 50% of which is to be financed by the European Commission.
The US government has launched a Digital Transformation with Africa (DTA) initiative dedicated to ‘expand[ing] digital access and literacy and strengthen[ing] digital enabling environments across the continent’. The USA plans to dedicate over US$350 million to this initiative, which is expected to support the implementation of both the African Union’s Digital Transformation Strategy and the US Strategy Towards Sub-Saharan Africa. DTA’s objectives revolve around three pillars:
- Digital economy and infrastructure: (a) expanding access to an open, interoperable, reliable, and secure internet; (b) expanding access to key enabling digital technologies, platforms, and services and scale the African technology and innovation ecosystem; (c) facilitating investment, trade, and partnerships in Africa’s digital economy.
- Human capital development: (a) facilitating inclusive access to digital skills and literacy, particularly for youth and women; (b) fostering inclusive participation in the digital economy; (c) strengthening the capacity of public sector employees to deliver digital services.
- Digital enabling environment: (a) strengthening the capacities of authorities and regulators to develop, implement, and enforce sound policies and regulations; (b) supporting policies and regulations that promote competition, innovation, and investment; (c) promoting governance that strengthens and sustains an open, interoperable, reliable, and secure digital ecosystem.
A new Industry Specification Group (ISG) on Terahertz was launched in the framework of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to define the target scenarios and the concrete frequency bands of interest on terahertz (THz) communications. THz is a candidate technology for 6G networks.
As explained by Thomas Kürner, Chair of ISG THz, the group ‘provides an opportunity for ETSI members to coordinate their pre-standards research efforts on THz technology across various European collaborative projects, extended with relevant global initiatives, a move towards paving the way for future standardisation of the technology’.
The ISG will initially focus on two major categories of use cases for THz: (a) mobile applications with high data rate requirements, such as augmented and virtual reality, in-flight and in-train entertainment applications, as well as vehicular and satellite communications; and (b) applications requiring both communication and sensing capabilities, such as holographic telepresence and interactive and cooperative robotics.
For the development of intelligent and connected vehicles, Porsche Engineering and Vodafone Business have developed Europe’s first 5G hybrid mobile private network (MPN) at Nardò Technical Centre (NTC) in southern Italy. The Porsche-owned and -operated proving ground now provides its clients with a real-time communication network that promises shorter delays, high bandwidth, enhanced security and dependability, and faster deployment times. It is claimed to enable globally networked collaboration and effective data-driven engineering.
In early 2023, as part of the Reimagine Education Initiative, Airtel will connect 620 primary schools in Nigeria to digital learning through its partnership with UNICEF. The implementation of the project will take five years. In the first year, Airtel and UNICEF will deliver digital learning resources to the 620 identified schools: to twenty schools this December and the remaining 600 before the end of February 2023. The project will provide a reliable telecommunications network and free access to a curriculum through the Nigeria Learning Passport (NLP), an e-learning platform developed by the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Education, UNICEF, and Microsoft. In addition, Airtel will provide free access to the Youth Agency Market Place (YOMA) digital platform to any Airtel subscriber.
Australia, Canada, the UK, and the USA have issued a Joint statement on telecommunications supplier diversity. The statement highlights the four countries’ commitment ‘to ensuring the security and resilience of [their] telecommunications networks, including by fostering a diverse supply chain and influencing the development of future telecommunications technologies such as 6G’. The countries also note the role of open and interoperable networks in creating ‘a more open, diverse, and innovative market’.
To achieve telecommunications suuplier diversity, the countries will:
- Share information on their policy approaches to telecom suupliers diversity;
- Take a complementary and cooperative approach to telecom research and development;
- Proactively address security concerns as open and interoperable architectures develop;
- Work together to encourage transparency in industry-led standards-setting processes;
- Encourage industry to avoid market fragmentation;
- Coordinate efforts when engaging with international stakeholders and fora, share and implement best practices, and work together to tackle shared policy challenges.
Furthermore, Australia, Canada, and the USA have endorsed the Open RAN Principles published by the UK in 2022: open disaggregation, standards-based compliance, demonstrated interoperability, and implementation neutrality.
The initiatives are expected to help open up the global market to new competitors and increase efforts to lessen the world’s dependence on a limited number of telecommunications corporations to build and operate 5G and future networks.
To provide a full range of mobile and data services to Filipino mobile users, a US$40 million loan has been signed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Tiger Infrastructure Philippines, Inc. As of 2021, an estimated 164 towers per 1 million people or about 27,000 telecom towers had been installed in the Philippines. To connect the unconnected, the government of the Philippines estimates that an additional 60,000 towers are needed by 2031. The loan will fund 380 telecommunications towers in the Mindanao and Visayas regions.
On 6 December 2022, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) started Federal Court proceedings against internet services provider Telstra for making false or misleading representations to consumers about upload speed to the residential broadband plan called ‘Belong.’
ACCC found that, between October and November 2020, Telstra transferred approximately 9000 customers from Belong plan with a maximum download speed of 100Mbps and maximum upload speed of 40Mbps to a service with a maximum upload speed of 20Mbps.
In November 2022, Telstra, Optus, and TPG were ordered to pay AUD$33.5 million for making false or misleading representations to consumers about specific internet plans under Australia’s national broadband network (NBN).
The third ministerial meeting of the EU-US Trade and Technology Council (TTC) was held on 5 December 2022 in Washington, DC, USA. During the meeting, the two parties:
- Reiterated the importance of cooperating on trust and security in the ICT ecosystem and noted that the TTC Working Group on ICTS security and competitiveness plans to discuss transatlantic subsea cables’ connectivity and security, including alternative routes, such as the transatlantic route to connect Europe, North America and Asia.
- Reiterated their commitment to developing and implementing trustworthy artificial intelligence (AI), building on the Joint Roadmap on Evaluation and Measurement Tools for Trustworthy AI and Risk Management.
- Announced plans to launch a pilot project to assess the use of privacy-enhancing technologies and synthetic data in health and medicine.
- Announced plans to establish an expert task force to strengthen research and development cooperation on quantum information science, develop common frameworks for assessing technology readiness, discuss intellectual property, and export control-related issues as appropriate, and work together to advance international standards.
- Announced progress on increasing standards cooperation, for instance through the Strategic Standards Information mechanism meant to enable the EU and the USA to share information about international standardisation activities and react to common strategic issues.
- Announced that the US Department of Commerce and the European Commission are entering into an administrative arrangement to implement an early warning mechanism to address and mitigate semiconductor supply chain disruptions in a cooperative way.
- Stressed the importance of eliminating the use of arbitrary and unlawful surveillance to target human rights defenders, and expressed concerns over government-imposed internet shutdowns.
- Announced plans to enhance transatlantic trade, for instance through developing joint best practices for the use of digital tools to simplify or reduce the cost of commercial actors’ interactions with the governments in relation to trade-related policy, legal requirements, or regulatory requirements.
- Announced the launch of a Talent for Growth Task Force to facilitate exchanges of experiences on training and capacity building and serve as a catalyst for innovative skills policies.
These and other commitments and initiatives are outlined in the joint statement issued at the end of the meeting.
