African priorities for the Global Digital Compact

Context
This report analyses a webinar titled ‘African Priorities for the Global Digital Compact’, organised by DiploFoundation. The event served as a quarterly discussion, focusing on the African Union’s (AU) African Digital Compact. This compact is a political agreement that outlines a continental framework for digital policy and action, developed to ensure a unified African position in ongoing global digital cooperation processes, including the UN’s Global Digital Compact.

Why it matters
The webinar is significant as it provides critical insights into Africa’s strategic digital priorities directly from experts involved in shaping and implementing these policies. The discussion moves beyond high-level aspirations to grapple with the practical challenges and power dynamics involved in digital development. It highlights Africa’s aim to transition from being a rule-taker to an active shaper of its digital future, making it highly relevant for global policymakers, investors, and civil society organisations engaged with the continent.

What was discussed
The conversation was guided by a moderator and featured four core panellists. The discussion began by exploring the vision behind the African Digital Compact, which aims to connect all Africans, foster a thriving digital economy, and create interoperable digital government services. A significant portion was dedicated to data, with speakers emphasising its role as a strategic asset for innovation while expressing grave concerns over its extraction and misuse by foreign entities, a phenomenon repeatedly termed ‘digital colonisation’.

The need for robust digital public infrastructure (DPI), particularly digital ID and payment systems, was highlighted as a foundation for integration and service delivery. Panellists linked digital progress directly to broader African goals like the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), arguing that digital tools should facilitate the free movement of people and goods. The implementation challenges were frankly addressed, including the lack of resources, the need for political will, and the crucial roles of various stakeholders: governments in creating enabling environments, the private sector in supporting indigenous businesses, civil society in ensuring accountability, and academia in building skills.

Unique and non-expected insights
A particularly striking proposal was to measure digital success not solely by economic metrics like GDP growth but also by the enhancement of human dignity and freedom for Africans. The passionate critique of the visa application process for Africans travelling to Western nations served as a powerful, concrete example of data and dignity issues. The concept of ‘digital colonisation’ was not a peripheral concern but a central and urgent theme, framing data governance as a matter of continental sovereignty. Furthermore, the argument that electrification is a non-negotiable prerequisite for any meaningful digital transformation provided a grounded, often-overlooked perspective on the infrastructure divide.

Follow-up and next steps
The discussion concluded with clear calls to action. Participants were directed to engage with the work of the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent regarding AI and bias. A strong call was made for African governments to assert greater control over their digital ecosystems and data. Finally, the need for proactive, collaborative implementation of the compact’s goals by all stakeholder groups was emphasised, moving from agreement on paper to action on the ground. The webinar is part of a series, with the next quarterly discussion planned for the future.

Nnenna Nwakanma | Civil society advocate and consultant

• Pan-African digital connectivity: Envision a future where every African can connect to affordable, high-quality internet from anywhere on the continent, eliminating the need to search for signals.
• Digital ID for integration: Advocated for a universal African digital ID system to facilitate seamless movement, access to services, and data management across national borders.
• From consumption to creation: Emphasised the need for digital skills that enable Africans to be producers and innovators, not just consumers of technology and content.
• Dignity and data sovereignty: Argued passionately for African digital dignity, criticising the humiliating data extraction practices Africans face, such as when applying for visas to Western nations.

Moctar Yedaly, Director for Africa Hub, Global Forum for Cyber Expertise (GFCE)

• Historical continuum of African digital agendas: Situated the African Digital Compact within a history of continental ICT initiatives, from early satellite plans to the Digital Transformation Strategy.
• Implementation and resource deficit: Identified the lack of concrete implementation plans and mobilisation of African resources as a critical weakness in past and current continental strategies.
• The primacy of energy: Stated that sustainable digital development in Africa is fundamentally dependent on the prior electrification of the entire continent.
• Warning on digital colonisation: Issued a stark warning that Africa is losing control of its data and digital infrastructure to foreign commercial interests, leading to a new form of colonisation.

Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u, Former Kenyan Cabinet Secretary; UN DPI Board member

• Multi-stakeholder vision of success: Defined success for the compact as universal access for citizens, a thriving digital economy for businesses, and efficient, interoperable digital government services.
• Data for innovation: Proposed that overcoming siloed data and promoting open data ecosystems are prerequisites for fostering digital innovation and entrepreneurship across Africa.
• Inclusion and safeguards: Stressed that all digital development must be built with safeguards ‘by design’, including cybersecurity, data protection, and inclusion for marginalised groups.
• Collaborative implementation: Detailed the specific roles required from government (policy/regulation), private sector (indigenous SME support), academia (skills), and civil society (accountability) to make the compact a reality.

Katherine Getao (Moderator), Retired Kenyan public servant

• Digital compact as a political framework: Introduced the concept of a compact as a political agreement providing a framework for action and policy in a key area.
• Diaspora inclusion: Prompted discussion on how digital tools can reconnect the African diaspora with the continent and ensure their representation in global digital fora.
• Contextualising solutions: Questioned whether Africa can achieve its digital goals solely by adopting best practices from other regions or if it needs to develop context-specific solutions.
• Call to action: Concluded by emphasising the need for acceptance, buy-in, and practical action from all stakeholders to realise the compact’s vision.

Amr Aljowaly, Director of Citizens and Diaspora, African Union Commission

• Diaspora reconnection: Highlighted the potential of digital technology to bridge time and space, reconnecting the global African diaspora with the socio-economic development of the continent.
• African representation in global fora: Emphasised the importance of ensuring strong African representation in newly established global digital cooperation mechanisms, such as a proposed UN panel of scientists.
• AI and bias: Pointed to the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent’s focus on AI, underscoring the need to eliminate bias in algorithms and data collection that affects people of African descent.

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List of speakers with affiliation and word count

Speaker	Affiliation	Word count
Nnenna Nwakanma	Civil society advocate and consultant	1535
Moctar Yedaly	Director for Africa Hub, Global Forum for Cyber Expertise (GFCE)	1402
Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u	Former Kenyan Cabinet Secretary; UN Digital Public Infrastructure Board member	1388
Katherine Getao	Moderator; retired Kenyan public servant, cyber diplomacy trainer	664
Amr Aljowaly	Director of Citizens and Diaspora, African Union Commission (participating personally)	394

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Speaker demographics

• Stakeholder group: The panel consisted of representatives from civil society (1), international organisations (2), and government (2). Academia and the private sector were not directly represented on the panel.
• Continent: All speakers were affiliated with African entities or were African nationals.
• Gender: The panel included three female speakers and two male speakers.

Agreements

• The necessity of the African Digital Compact: All speakers agreed on the importance and value of the African Digital Compact as a necessary framework for unifying the continent’s digital approach and voice. Moctar Yedaly noted its place in a continuum of AU initiatives, while Nnenna Nwakanma and Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u elaborated on its aspirational goals.
• Data as a critical and vulnerable asset: There was consensus on the paramount importance of data governance and the need to protect African data from exploitation. Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u spoke of data as the ‘new oil’ for innovation, while Moctar Yedaly and Nnenna Nwakanma strongly warned of its misuse and the resulting ‘digital colonisation’.
• The need for a multi-stakeholder approach: All panellists implicitly or explicitly agreed that implementing the compact requires collaboration between governments, the private sector, civil society, and academia. Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u provided the most detailed breakdown of each group’s responsibilities.

Disagreements

No explicit disagreements between speakers were found in the transcript. The discussion was characterised by a shared vision and complementary perspectives.

• Consult the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent: Amr Aljowaly invited participants to consult the page of the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent to see ideas voiced on AI and bias.
• Wake up African governments: Moctar Yedaly called for African governments to ‘wake up’ and rethink their approach to controlling national digital infrastructure and data governance to avoid digital colonisation.
• Proactive collaboration for implementation: Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u called for all stakeholders (government, private sector, civil society, academia) to work together proactively to ensure the implementation of the compact’s goals, moving beyond planning to action.

• “70% of our population is less than 30 years.” – Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u
• “at least two megabits per second to come to everybody” – Moctar Yedaly (referencing a target from the Digital Transformation Strategy)
• “a device that doesn’t cost more than $50” – Moctar Yedaly (referencing a target from the Digital Transformation Strategy)
• “over 200 languages across the continent” – Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u
• “over 60% of the continent is in rural areas” – Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u

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Linguistic devices

• Metaphor: “data is the new oil” – Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u
• Metaphor: “If you think that you are a client or a customer, know you are the menu itself. You are being eaten, traded…” – Moctar Yedaly
• Rhetorical Question: “What good is free movement in Africa when it only benefits those who are not Africans?” – Nnenna Nwakanma

Tech dichotomies

Dichotomy	Explanation	Quotes
Digital opportunity vs digital colonisation	Tension between harnessing digital technology for African development and succumbing to a new form of foreign domination through control of infrastructure and data.	“We are moving now from what we moved from, the political colonisation, to what’s so-called the digital colonisation that is coming.” (Moctar Yedaly)
Connectivity vs meaningful access	Tension between providing basic internet coverage and ensuring that access is affordable, reliable, usable, and supported by necessary infrastructure like electricity.	“without electricity, without energy, nothing can really happen in the domain of digital.” (Moctar Yedaly)
Global standards vs African sovereignty	Tension between adopting global digital frameworks and preserving the ability to set independent, context-specific policies that protect African data and interests.	“Our data are being used by national implementers at locally implemented, international, and locally implemented operator who does whatever they want to do with them.” (Moctar Yedaly)
Innovation & growth vs regulation & accountability	Tension between fostering rapid digital innovation and economic growth and the imperative to implement regulations that ensure safety, equity, and accountability.	“It promotes data sovereignty and regional data sharing frameworks that enhance trust and compliance with global standards.” (Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u)

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Summary: The most prominent tension revolves around sovereignty and power. The discussion is heavily focused on the risks of external control (‘digital colonisation’) and the necessary conditions for meaningful and self-determined digital development in Africa. The overall perspective is critically aware of global power imbalances and advocates for an assertive African agency in the digital realm.

Word frequency

Single words

Word/phrase	Frequency
digital	87
Africa	52
data	40
African	33
continent	19

Bigrams and trigrams

Word/phrase	Frequency
digital compact	11
digital infrastructure	7
African Union	6
data governance	5
digital colonisation	3
digital public infrastructure	4

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Thought-provoking comments

“What good is free movement in Africa when it only benefits those who are not Africans?”
Nnenna Nwakanma

“We are not poor. We are not well managed.”
Nnenna Nwakanma

“If you think that you are a client or a customer, know you are the menu itself. You are being eaten, traded, you know, and every single moment.”
Moctar Yedaly

“I am afraid that we Africans are already losing the battle of data governance.”
Moctar Yedaly

“We are moving now from what we moved from, the political colonisation, to what’s so-called the digital colonisation.”
Moctar Yedaly

“We in Africa should have a different way of measuring things. And I’d like to bring in dignity as part of our own measurement for success.”
Nnenna Nwakanma

Mwende Nirjani: [00:00:02] Love you. A real pleasure to be here with each one of you. And we thank you because you have chosen to spend your time with us. And I trust that our time together will be fruitful. It will be enlightening to we will understand, like I am, because I’m very curious about the Global Digital Compact.

So we are going to start off immediately with the panel discussion on the African priorities for the global Digital Compact. We know there’s a global digital compact, but there’s also an African digital compact.

And our panellists are well-versed in this area, and they will be breaking it down for us so that we can understand and be on the same footing with each one of them. So we are happy and are glad that you are able to make it this afternoon, noon, evening or morning. So thank you. So I would like to invite Dr Katherine Getao to start off. Start us off. And Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Doctor Kitao.

Katherine Getao: [00:01:13] Yes. Here I am. A pleasure. And welcome to our webinar this quarter for African Priorities for the Global Digital Compact. We have four distinguished panellists. We have Amr Al-juwaili ambassador. We also have Mokhtar Yadali, Nnenna Nwakanma and Nyambura Ndung’u. And each of them, I’m going to give them an opportunity to introduce themselves in just one minute. I think you’re familiar with me now, but for those who may be seeing me for the first time, I’m a retired Kenyan public servant now, very much involved in training diplomats on cyber diplomacy issues around the world.

And, of course, I was excited to hear that there is an African digital compact because it shows that Africa has a united political position on what needs to be done in the digital realm. And I recognise the excellent work of the African Union in coming up with this idea and with this document. So I’ll just hand over. Maybe I should do ladies first. So I’ll start with Nnennaa. Could you just briefly introduce yourself? Hello?

Nnenna Nwakanma: [00:02:44] Can everyone hear me and see me? My name is Nina. I come from the internet. That’s the one-liner. Now, I don’t know what to say in one minute, but I’ve written out five key words. The first is advocate advocacy. The second is strategy. The third is policy. The fourth is diplomacy. And the fifth is Diplo. So, as an advocate, I think some of you met me during my time at the World Wide Web Foundation, where I was the chief advocate.

So that is part of where I come from, advocating for digital rights and for digital dignity in strategy. Some of you have done some work with me as part of my own consultancy, Leaning.org, whether it’s in digital policies in countries or across the world, one of them being the global digital Compact, by the way, in policy in policy, we I, I do technical assistance with Countries or organisations who are figuring their way around a digital. Digital governance or digital policies or digital economy. Recently I’ve got into I mean, originally I did international relations. That is the classic or the classically called diplomacy.

But I’ve come back into digital diplomacy and, very recently, public diplomacy. I’m an AI global ambassador, and today I’m in Italy, between Italy and the Holy See. Because I’ve been invited as an AI ambassador, His Holiness the Pope is interested in artificial intelligence and has reached out to a few of us to speak with us on that.

And finally, I’m an alumnus. This is very important to me. I’ve been in Diplo doing internet governance, from which some of you know me. Doing tech research, tech policy and most recently, public diplomacy. I think I will stop here. And any other thing. I hope we can talk online. Thank you.

Mwende Nirjani: [00:05:21] Thank you very much, Nina, for a very comprehensive and very interesting introduction. And we’re looking forward to hearing from you. For the participants, please feel free to put your comments and questions in the chat. I hope we’ll have a little time at the end for 1 or 2 direct questions, but we will be looking at the chat to see how you want this discussion to flow. So please do contribute. I move on to Nyambura. Ndung’u. Just introduce yourself briefly.

Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u: [00:06:00] Thank you. Doctor. Good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u, connecting from Nairobi, Kenya. I’ve been doing work in strategic development, including the development of the ICT master plan for Kenya 2014 and even the current one. I’ve been working on the project from 2019 to 2023.

And for those who don’t know, Preeda is a policy and Regulation initiative for Digital Africa, where we were focused on internet governance, harmonisation of policies and regulations and also connectivity through ITU. I’ve also been involved in cybersecurity, where I’m one of the founders of the Network of African Women in Cyber Security. And I’ve also been doing research with the research ICT Africa as they are a country lead in terms of collecting data and writing reports with a focus on both the supply and demand side when it comes to access and usage of the digital technologies.

I’ve also worked in the policy sector as a cabinet secretary in Kenya, information, communication and digital economy. And then also I’m on various boards, including the UN Digital Public Infrastructure Board, where we are focused on safeguards, an area that we must really ensure that we emphasise as we move along. And also in the ITU innovation board, I’m also a Diplo alumni 2006 and 2021. So I’ve been in the space for a while. Thank you. And back to you, doctor.

Katherine Getao: [00:07:42] Thank you very much. Nyambura. We’re really looking forward to hearing from you, from that rich experience. Ambassador Amar, please introduce yourself.

Amr Aljowaly: [00:07:57] Thank you very much, dear moderator. And congratulations to you and to Diplo and to the whole panel for organising this important webinar. My name is. My name is Ammar Aljowaly. I have I’m the director of citizens and diaspora at the African Union Commission.

And in that respect, actually, as you know, the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent had chosen an artificial intelligence as the theme of the year related to how it relates to people of African descent and to making sure that their interests are well represented. But I’m here in a personal capacity. Just to follow up on the important work that Diplo is doing on digital cooperation. And hence I’ll be more of an observer and a listener rather than a speaker at the moment. Thank you very much.

Katherine Getao: [00:08:59] Okay, thank you, ambassador, but we’d love to hear from your rich experience. So last but not least, Mokhtar Yadali, please introduce yourself.

Moctar Yedaly: [00:09:12] Hello, everybody. And thank you very much for having me with you today, Doctor Catherine. And I salute everybody. My name is Mokhtar, and I’m a former, how can I say, official of the African Union Commission and A member of the government of Mauritania. Currently, I hold the position of the Global Forum for Cyber Expertise. Director for the Africa Hub. I’ve been involved in most of the major ICT, telecom, and digital programs for the African continent, starting from before the era of fibre, when we were aiming at satellites and during the era of fibre, during the internet era.

And I am proud to have been coordinating the digital transformation strategy for Africa in the Malabo Convention. And recently, the last one I have been contributing to, or I coordinated, was the African Agenda on Cybersecurity capacity building. I’m so happy to see most of the people I see here participating, as a participant, or as a panellist, to know them very well. And I hope we will continue to know each other. Thank you very much.

Katherine Getao: [00:10:45] Thank you very much. And you’re the icing on the cake, doctor. And I’m sure the participants are convinced that they have the right group in the room to discuss this very important document. Now I read that a compact is a political agreement between countries, and it provides a framework of action and policy in a very important area.

And it’s really wonderful that I think Africa is the first continent to have a digital compact, even as we work towards having a global digital compact. So I’ll turn to you, Moctar, to use the opposite order. And my question is really quite simple. What digital future was envisaged by the African Union as they set off this process through the Council of Ministers to have an African Digital Compact?

Moctar Yedaly: [00:11:57] Thank you very much, Cathy. And allow me just to say something very important, which is Africa. The African aspiration is really to unify the continent. African aspiration is to build the United States of Africa. African aspiration is to connect from a digital point of view, all African countries, and to have a seamless kind of connectivity among all its members. Since its inception during the OAU time, Africa has always had a very continental kind of ICT telecom agenda.

And as I mentioned during my introduction, the first idea of having a really regional satellite communication was coming from Africa in 1967. And then after that, there were many, many programs in the 2000s, the first comprehensive program was what we call the master plan on ICT and telecommunication.

That plan will be merged later on into what we call a PDA project, where you have telecom, energy, and transport together. And we evolved into the Digital Transformation strategy 2020, 2030. And right after the world had adopted the Digital Compact, the African Union also decided to connect itself to the global agenda and have its own kind of digital compact.

Amr Aljowaly: [00:13:33] What is really into that is basically if I just say simply, the digital compact has several main goals, which are actually common to all of us before. One is to connect everyone to the internet, and the second is to make it very affordable, which is now very expensive. To make it cheaper, then teach people digital skills, people to be really capable of using the ICTs and internet as they should be.

Build a strong technical business. Kind of creates jobs in technology, keeps people safe online and protects personal data. Those are the main objectives that Israeli Africa wants to compete in the global economy. They wanted to grow, to have the startups grow. They want to train computer scientists.

They want to connect that with the African Agenda 2063 and work with the United Nations Development Goals, the SDGs. And they want to focus on education, on health, farming, infrastructure, digital tools for IoT, etc., all of which are included in that agenda. It’s really a very global and exhaustive framework for African sustainable development. Over to you.

Katherine Getao: [00:14:58] Thank you for that. Mokhtar. And reminding us that this is not the first time Africa has come together in the area of telecom and ICT, and perhaps that’s why it is one of the most successful areas within Africa. So thank you for reminding us that there has been a continuum of harmonised action on the part of the African countries. So I move on to Nyambura, and then followed by Nenna on the same subject, but maybe just tell us in a visionary, aspirational kind of way.

What would success look like if this compact succeeds? What would that success look like for African citizens, businesses, governments and the private sector? If this compact is fully implemented as you read it? What’s that vision we should all be looking forward to? And I’ve seen questions in the chat. So I’ll just say that we’ll answer Peter’s question when we get to the second phase of our questions, which will be on the way that the compact aligns with existing agendas and frameworks. But for now, we’re in the aspiration part of our questions.

And our ambassador, if you want to chip in, please do, because I think you described yourself as being in charge of the citizens and diaspora of African descent. So what would the vision look like for all these people who are looking up to this document? Starting with Nyambura, we go on to Nana and Ambassador Amma. If you’d like to make a few remarks, I’d be very welcome also.

Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u: [00:16:59] Thank you, Katherine and. Yes. This African digital compact has really focused on all aspects, all our stakeholders that we expect to benefit, starting from the citizens, government, the private sector and the roles each one of them is supposed to play. But going to ten years from now, what success is likely to look like and recognizing that, first of all we have Africa has the youngest population are that are 70% of our population is less than 30 years.

And therefore these are African digital compact, really focused on them in terms of building the skills. But then, if I may start with looking at the citizens that are universal digital access, and in that, we are looking in terms of devices, we are looking in terms of connectivity across the continent, not just in urban but also in rural areas. But then, we are also looking in terms of electricity penetration, because without these, we are not able to drive the digital technologies.

And therefore ten years then would expect that these infrastructure would have been pushed up to the rural areas and everybody will have access, would have started looking at digital literacy and skills that without this kind of skills and not just basic skills.

Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u: [00:18:26] We are talking about data analytics, cybersecurity; everybody across the continent should be able to get into the digital space and navigate easily and be able to get what they need to get from it. We don’t expect improvement of the quality of life, and that is enhanced through the safe, inclusive DPI. And again, what we are talking about here is in terms of ensuring that we have put the digital public infrastructure across that is able to help in terms of health, in terms of education.

Everyone will be able to be identified digitally. So for the citizen, that is it. Then we come to businesses that will be having a thriving digital economy, where SMEs will leverage digital platforms, will have tech hubs that are not just in urban areas but also in rural areas, and these will be enhanced due to the connectivity we talked about. And as we have seen, most countries are already coming up with their broadband strategies. Digital transformation strategies are really focused on access, last-mile connectivity and the like. Then, the regional and global competition is of African companies that will not just be recipients of what is happening outside, but will again become producers of the same.

Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u: [00:19:40] Then, when it comes to governments, the expectation is that we’ll have come up with safe, secure and interoperable systems. And what we are saying is that the health sector, education sector, logistics and the like, they’ll all be digital and services will be delivered in the most effective and efficient way. We’ll also have harmonised policies and regulations that would foster growth.

And we are talking of regulations that we can exchange data. Data is becoming the new oil. So basically data can be able to move in a safe secure. And everybody will be confident that their data is being used in the right way in terms of partnership. Again, with these African digital compact, it has focused on partnerships, meaningful partnerships with the private sector, with the civil society, with the academia, to ensure that each and every one of these stakeholders is playing their role to ensure that services are being delivered. The government is being accountable, private sector is being accountable. And basically, in ten years, you should all be in the digital space safely. Our young children should be able to be producers and creators, innovators, not just consumers of technology. Thank you. Daktari, back to you.

Katherine Getao: [00:21:02] Okay. Nyambura. Really very, very comprehensive. So, Nana. Mama. Internet. What will people be doing? They’ll have the technology in their hands. The regulations will be in place. Everyone will have a chance to do what they want to do through the internet and on the internet. But what will they be doing? Nina.

Nnenna Nwakanma: [00:21:31] Thanks. Thanks. Madam. Moderator. I want to say thank you to my sister, Minister Margaret. You nailed it for me. So I’m going to go further from where you left us. She has kind of given us the framework of where we want to be, but I like to give you collaterals, the things you remember. The first thing about connectivity, what we envisioned with the African Digital Compact, is that every single African should be able to connect from wherever they are on the continent of Africa.

That means that from Cape to Cairo, from Djibouti to Dakar, through Nairobi, Lagos, wherever we are, this is not what it is now, but I hope that in ten years I don’t have to get out of the compound to go near the street to look for what to look for 4G or 5G. This continent will be totally covered, and this internet coverage will also come at a reasonable price. So coverage, availability and affordability are one thing that we would have. Because it’s not enough for people to be able to connect in Nairobi.

And then when they get out of Nairobi, they are not able to do so to be able to have fibre in Lagos. And when they go to my village in ABA or outside of ABA, they will not be able to do that. So that connectivity, wherever we are, will be one thing that I will count as a success. The other thing that Margaret talked about is BPR, digital public infrastructure, but I will take one collateral from that, and that will be an ID card that is digital, as well as having the plastic or whatever that has an embedded chip.

Nnenna Nwakanma: [00:23:37] Digit IDs are very important wherever we go. So a digital ID or have a I have one now I’m a Nigerian, I have a Nigerian national ID card and I also have the digital format of it. I have it on my phone. I can easily transact with it, so that a digital ID for every single African would indeed be a success for us. And it’s really important that if we can implement digital ID across Africa, it would help. Like Margaret said, in managing our data and in keeping it safe.

If I have a digital ID, if my ID card, my ID number will be linked to my driver’s license. It will be linked to my school. It will be linked to my hospital to be linked to my data. If we have one across Africa, it meant that it means that I can go by road as a West African, go from Ghana to Nigeria, go from Cote d’Ivoire to Dakar. And when I show up and I, I have a problem, I go to a public hospital, I’m going to give my ID card to the doctor or the the health person, and they are going to be able to access my data and find out exactly how best to take care of me. So what? The first one is being able to connect from my village, from wherever I am.

Nnenna Nwakanma: [00:25:13] The second one is having my digital ID give me access and facilitate life for me across Africa. The third one is skills. Being able to be of my own self and an economic contributor. I think Margaret mentioned some of that so that we not we don’t just download off other people, we also upload so that we don’t just pay, but we also get paid so that we don’t just consume, but we also create that capacity to be able to use the connectivity that I have to be able to do things with data and my own data that I think would be a very important success to us now in, in the government area, once we have ourselves digitally built, digitally identified, digitally capable, my desire would be that I can go and access citizen services from the Kenyan government, you know.

I have an ID on the Kenya portal, the Kenya citizenship portal. I should be able, as a Nigerian, to get access to other things across Africa. So let me make that clear. My own government, as a Nigerian, should be able to give me citizen services, but also give other Africans. So the idea of citizenship ultimately should go beyond nationality. I will come back to that when we speak. We should have an African citizenship. I should have my identity as a Nigerian, serving as my identity in Cote d’Ivoire, in Ghana, in Botswana, in Tunisia, in Kenya, in South Africa. Then I will feel complete as an African. Let me stop there.

Katherine Getao: [00:27:16] Thank you, Nana, for that rousing contribution. And certainly, I believe Africans were always on the move before we drew boundaries. And you are giving me a picture where the digital realm can enable us to once again move freely and safely across borders and give each other hospitality. That is so much a part of our culture. Now, Amaar, I know you weren’t.

You wanted to listen more than to speak, but I’m thinking more and more about the diaspora. We have those who recently migrated, but we have those who left our continent hundreds of years ago. How can digital help these people to experience some of the warmth of Africa once again? And how does the digital compact address that issue?

Amr Aljowaly: [00:28:17] Thank you very much, dear moderator. And you’re always convincing to the extent that, actually, I changed my mind, and I’m happy to engage with this very rich discussion that we’re having here. And I think the mere fact that you mentioned that old, that is digital, has an incredible impact and potential for connecting the African diaspora and the people of African descent back with their mother continent is a very perceptive idea because everything that’s digital basically bridges time and space. And if Africans outside the African continent can be reconnected to their mother continent through information and communication technology and all the other digital tools, then this will be an incredible contribution to the socio-economic development of the continent.

But also, since we are speaking about the Digital Cooperation panel, it is important to have the African representation in the place that it deserves in the newly established mechanisms. As we know, one of the outcomes of the digital cooperation and the digital Compact is the establishment of this panel of scientists. And here Africa deserves its well-deserved position and representation, either through Africans on the continent or Africans abroad. Also, the newly established policy dialogue that aims to be launched by the 80th the 80th session of the UN in a few weeks.

Amr Aljowaly: [00:30:10] It should really engage and give the space for the African Group in New York to project the common position of the continent and of the EU on these particular topics. Maybe my colleagues from ISD, the Information Society Division and at the Commission can develop and elaborate further.

But once again, the voice of Africa should not be missed. And in fact, Africa is not only impacted by everything that’s digital, but it’s also a solution provider. Finally, I would like to pinpoint once again to the very perceptive selection by the UN Permanent Forum of people of African descent, of the topic of AI and how that AI needs to be to be to break away from any bias, either in the algorithms or in the data collection, so that people of Africa and people of African descent have their fair representation and their fair interests safeguarded by these new technologies and platforms.

So I invite all the participants in today’s webinar to actually consult the, the page of the UN Permanent Forum of People of African Descent and to see the important ideas that have been voiced there and hopefully to take that further in one of our future discussions and engagements. I thank you once again.

Katherine Getao: [00:31:45] Thank you very much for that. And certainly, we don’t forget our diaspora. They are part of the very rich heritage of Africa. And we want them to participate and to benefit from everything that is happening in Africa today. And you’ve helped us to very neatly Segue into the area of alignment, which is how the digital compact dovetails with other initiatives? And I’ll turn to you, Moctar, because you’re very familiar with some of the very important instruments that have come up in Africa and beyond.

And perhaps you can take up to Manuel’s Point from the chat, the very important intersection between energy AI cloud and anything ICT seems to be very linked with the idea of having sufficient electricity to make sure that, as Margaret and Nina have pointed out, to have connectivity everywhere and easy access to applications, data and initiatives wherever we are. So just tell us a little bit. There’s a Malibu there are wishes, and there are other frameworks which are in place. And maybe you can just briefly link them.

Moctar Yedaly: [00:33:28] Thank you. It’s a very good and very exhaustive question, and I’m glad to really address it. I promise you that at the end of this discussion, I will be less formal than I am now and more provocative than I should be. Number one is when somebody mentioned Malibu as part of an emerging kind of framework. I just wanted to remind everybody that the Malabo convention is an African agenda. This is a unique document and framework. And first, in its kind, in unique in this kind done by the African Union. Of course, then it’s related to cybersecurity. Personal data protection, electronic transactions, and child protection are all embedded into that convention.

And hence it’s really a has entered into force. And it is the pillar, one of the major pillars of the digital transformation and hands-on at the CDC. I mean, the the digital compact, the this the African Digital compact, EDC, African digital compact, like any other continental programs that has been prepared and adopted by the African Union institution has been always referring and linked to the global agendas in general, starting from the wishes right to the MDGs, the Millennium Development Goal to the SDGs, to all those global UN agendas or development agendas. Every single program built in Africa in the area of digital has been connected to this program. So that is now it’s just even in the preambles of the documents and how they are linked because digital is required as a condition of collaboration in cooperation because in the digital complex we are in context. We are all one village.

Having said that, the question about the energy was just great. I mentioned at the beginning that we had before the era of internet, we had what we call the master plans, and we convert them into one plan called Pida, which is the program for infrastructure development in Africa composed of energy, transport ICT sectors, all of them together in water, by the way, transboundary water, all of that, what we call the network services are put together and the Digital Transformation Strategy 20 2030 has one interesting paragraph.

Moctar Yedaly: [00:36:11] This is everything we wanted for Africa. First of all, we start by saying that the sustainable development of Africa starts with the electrification of the entire continent. So, without electricity, without energy, nothing can really happen in the domain of digital. Second is the connectivity for every single one has to be connected with at least at least, which is said two megabit per second, at least two megabits per second to come to everybody. Whether you are, at least you get that.

And to be able to do it through a device that doesn’t cost more than $50. So, from all points of view, what has been said? Of course, you mentioned something about UN working groups and so on, though the African Union and the African agendas have always been connected to the other continental international agendas and global agendas. The contribution to Africa to that agenda was really and still very minimal. Yes, we adopt those global agendas, but we don’t sit around the table to formulate those global agendas.

And this is happening most of the time. I’ll come back to be less formal after that. But the question of energy is a unique one. The African agenda is linked to all other global agendas. And unfortunately, what is missing for all those agendas is the application or the implementation plan, and we’ll talk about that later on. Over to you.

Katherine Getao: [00:38:10] Thank you. Mokhtar. And I hope, Peter, you feel reassured that the digital compact is linked to issues which are being discussed elsewhere, such as infrastructure, data governance and all the very important parts of the whole. So I think that also provides a very neat segue into a question I have for Nina. How does this complement ongoing integration initiatives such as the CFT, the One Network or freedom of movement networks? I know you’re interested in these. How is the digital compact going to help us to get there?

Nnenna Nwakanma: [00:39:04] Thank you very much. I think I’ll end up getting more informal than that as time goes on. So here is the thing. My name is Nina. Yes, I said I come from the internet. I was born in the eastern part of Nigeria, and I’ve lived in Cameroon. I’ve lived in Togo. I’ve lived in Ghana, and I’ve spent some time in Tunisia and Ethiopia, and for the longest time in Côte d’Ivoire. I have gone from Côte d’Ivoire to Cameroon by road. In a car. Cote d’Ivoire. Ghana. Togo. Benin. Nigeria. Actually from from from from Guinea. From zero to to.

So I’ve, I’ve done seven countries on a round. And those of you who move around, you know how difficult it is to move around Africa. I think that the African market is coming up in Algeria. I’m, I’m, I’m tracking it, but here, here is my point. What good is free movement in Africa when it only benefits those who are not Africans? I think Dangote has come come, come around this and spoken about it. But it’s someone who holds an Ethiopian passport who will move more freely in Africa than I myself. I’m even better than most of you because I’m West African. I can still move across as a Nigerian.

Nnenna Nwakanma: [00:41:00] I can move from Nigeria all the way to to Mauritania on my passport. But other parts of Africa are not the same. Why is it that I can have a visa issued by France, and I will use that same visa for all the Schengen states? But then I will have to for someone in Zimbabwe, I recall, madam. Madam moderator, that there was. I think things have changed now. Now that the Ivory Coast has an e-visa for someone from Zimbabwe to come to Cote d’Ivoire, they actually had to go to a French embassy to get one because the French embassy had the mandate to issue an Ivorian visa to an African.

Guys when when we have a cross identity platform for Africans that would help us issue visas on behalf of other countries. I think there’s a Kenyan and East African visa now. And by the way, East Africa is going to host the African Cup of Nations. I don’t want to be doing a visa for Tanzania. And then I will do another visa for Uganda. Then Kenya is the only one that will allow me to come in free. Guys, I’m tired of it. Oh, I am, I’m too old to be running behind African leaders. If you don’t have an E visa, just leave.

Nnenna Nwakanma: [00:42:37] Let me. Let me be in my corner. I actually applied for an E visa, and I was told it’s going to take one month. What is the essence of an E visa when it takes one month? I mean, what is it? And then the European people gave me a three-year multiple visa. And here I am thinking of having a party a birthday party in in in in in Europe. Because my friends will find it easier to gather here. You see what I mean?

So, listen, I don’t want to get offensive to anyone, but I think that when we are looking for the dignity of Africans, that’s what we are looking for. That is the Africa we want. The Africa we want is the one that would allow me to be free, to move freely, to sell freely, to pay freely, and to be paid freely. And I think that the free trade zone, I think that the roaming, the one network, all of these come together for me.

We are not poor. We are not well managed. I believe that when we give ourselves that dignity, it’s not just about money. I know that other people want to to be seen as great. They want to be seen as a dominant power. But I don’t think that the Africa we want is the Africa that will go and colonise other people.

Nnenna Nwakanma: [00:43:56] That’s not the Africa we’re looking for. The Africa we’re looking for is Africa that will take care of our well-being, that will take care of our health, our education, our movement, our freedom. That’s what we are looking for. We are not looking to be the most powerful continent.

No, what we want is to be an Africa where people live happily with each other. So I will stop there and say that I, as an African, want to be part of a free zone. I want to be part of a continent. Let me share this image with you. When you go up in the skies, when you go to space, and you look at Africa, it is one block of land. And our brothers and sisters who are in the ocean, you don’t see the borders from space.

We are one people. We have the right to freedom. We have the right to digital development. We have the right to integration. And I believe that digital integration will hasten trade integration with the freedom of movement and will make us a better people overall. When we are better for ourselves, we are better for the world. Thank you.

Katherine Getao: [00:45:12] Thank you so much for that passionate statement. Nina. I’m always amazed that no matter where I go in Africa, no matter how difficult it is to get there, I feel very much at home once I get there. And as you said, we are one people, and we want the freedom to be ourselves. And that brings me to something. Nyambura.

Sometimes it seems as if we’re cutting and pasting from other continents ‘ knowledge experiences, and yet our problems seem to be a little different. And I especially feel that in the area of data. How are we going to foster digital innovation and overcome those integration barriers in order to really make our continent fly? Can we do it just by adopting best practices from elsewhere, or what do we need to do differently?

Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u: [00:46:31] Thank you. Doctor. And in reference to the Africa Digital Compact, one of the ambitions is to foster digital innovation that directly addresses and overcomes integration barriers like data drawers, language divides, poor infrastructure and fragmented information systems. And I really like Nena’s contribution that we are one continent, and we should be able to move around. We should be able to do business.

We should be able to offer services across. The ADC recognises that many African countries lack reliable, localised data needed for effective planning, trade, education and development. And the reason is working in silos, not just at the national level, at the regional level, but also at the national level that you will find within government. There is no sharing of information across the departments of the ministry. There is no sharing of information between the government and the private sector, and civil society.

So basically, there’s that challenge. And ADC proposes a strategic focus on digital infrastructure and open data ecosystems that will promote investment in digital infrastructure, to also encourage governments and institutions to create open data platforms enabling access to high-quality data. We are also talking about supporting an innovation ecosystem, and this can only happen if data is available.

Data that is of high integrity, data that is not in silos, that is available to every person, every young person who is going to be an entrepreneur, is able to get this data. And it promotes data sovereignty and regional data sharing frameworks that enhance trust and compliance with global standards.

Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u: [00:48:13] So Edison again recognises that Africa has many languages. I think we are over 200 languages across the continent. And this complicates trade. It creates a movement in the complicated delivery of services. Also, when we want to scale, we have one system in one country to use in a different country. Again, that brings a challenge.

And also, when we are talking about inclusivity, because we are saying we want everybody to be in the digital space, but not everybody is able to speak English or any other language, and therefore, it also proposes bridging language divides through AI and localised content. And again, when we get into this, then that means we’re able to engage our young people, to be able to be the one coming up with the solutions, to be able to to support local content development.

Because again, we are saying over 60% of the continent is in rural areas, so that we have most of our young people in rural areas, so we don’t want them to come to urban areas. Let us make you let them make use of local content to develop local solutions. Because once we do that again as a continent, we are not short of policies. Plans, all very good strategies. What we are lacking is clear implementation and again implementation.

Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u: [00:49:34] We need to work all of us together to ensure that the private sector is on the table, the civil society, and the government, to ensure we have it all again. ABC recognises that businesses struggle with weak physical infrastructure, fragmented markets and a lack of access to digital trade.

And that’s why, again, they have talked quite a lot about our digital public goods that should be protected. And again, countries coming up to to see which are the digital public goods and how do we protect them, how do we ensure that we support the digital payment system that can be trusted?

Because again, we are saying as we are moving with this digital infrastructure, we need to ensure that the safeguards are there. Issues of cybersecurity, data protection, digital rights, and issues of privacy. They are all taken into account and are again. The other thing it recognises is that African digital systems are often siloed and country-specific, hindering regional integration, which again we have spoken about, that this is the way we want to go.

And therefore, when it comes to digital public infrastructure, we are talking about digital ID that Nina elaborated on, we are talking about payment systems that are interoperable. We are talking of secure data sharing networks that again, we are moving digital in terms of payments, in terms of health, in terms of education, in terms of trade. Then we should be able to feel secure when we are using these systems.

Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u: [00:50:57] So in summary, we need. The African Digital Compact fosters digital innovation to overcome integration barriers by boosting data access and usage, bridging linguistic and cultural divides with inclusivity technology. But again, we can only use technology. It is up to us to make the choices. We can have the best technology, but it is us to ensure that we are. We are being inclusive. We are bringing women again. Gender has been discussed for many years. We are still discussing gender. I think we have to be proactive, and everyone has to do something in their own area to ensure that a small contribution leads to a massive outcome. We are talking about the youth, and again, our young people.

Digital technologies are where they’ll create jobs and the like. And you have to ensure that we are are they are ethical. We are using these technologies in an ethical way. And finall,y creating jobs and ensuring that digital infrastructure is sustainable because again, it’s not a situation where we are creating infrastructure, but it’s all sustainable. We are not thinking in terms of meaningful access. It’s not just about laying cables, but it’s also about ensuring that we continue using the same. And with this, then we have an inclusive economy, not at the national level, but at the regional level. Thanks, doctor.

Katherine Getao: [00:52:19] Thank you so much. Nyambura. For really bringing it home. How big is the agenda that we must fulfil? Mokhtar, here’s your chance to be controversial. I have the same question for you. What is it that we need to do differently? We have a huge population of youth. Many of them are tech-savvy. The rest of the world does not know Africa for having a lot of data and information. But we have these thousands of languages. We are probably the oldest inhabited continent. There must be a lot of information and data. How can it be captured, and how can it be used? And how can it create jobs and progress for our large population of youth and give them hope for the future?

Moctar Yedaly: [00:53:17] Okay, I’m not going to dwell on how data are important, how data governance. I think the speakers have addressed that. Everybody knows how important data is today. And though I disagree with the Time Magazine, you know, title, that data is the new oil. Because oil is something you can trade.

It’s something you can abuse. It’s something you can put in the market, and it’s something you can and should not do for data at all. So I completely disagree with that statement that by the time, you know, a few years back, when the title and everybody start using it, but let me just state it, you know, in a very simple and manner. Africa, as I said, is very good at putting their minds together and building very good continental development plans. And they do adopt them through their own political structure, whether the EU or at the level of the RECs or specialised institutions. But then, once the whole is adopted, two things are missing.

One is a concrete implementation plan. And the second most important thing is, where are the resources to implement that? And most of the time, you turn back to the international institutions in Western countries, asking them for money to do that. And we call it resource mobilisation. We call it a partnership. We call it, you know, I said, but why would somebody today give you anything to make you independent of them specifically in terms of using that? Remember that in the late 90s, most of the African countries had privatised their telecommunication sector.

Amr Aljowaly: [00:55:16] Then it became, you know, their digital sector. Most of the infrastructure that has been built is not built by a national kind of operator, but mainly built by a foreign operator implemented into the country, according to a return on investment, not in the interest of Africa, and not in the interest of goodwill. Whatever it is, is about business. People come for business, and in the era of digital data protection, it is something you have to take care of yourself.

So I am afraid that we Africans are already losing the battle of data governance. Our data are being used by national implementers at locally implemented, international, and locally implemented operator who does whatever they want to do with them. With a little bit of, you know, visibility of how things are happening and ourselves we enjoy today what we call the free services, what we call social media.

We don’t call now, whatever you wanted to call at any point in time for free, hoping that, you know, we think that free is something that is good, but who will be building $1 billion, you know, infrastructure for you to communicate if he’s not getting out of something? And if you think that you are a client or a customer, know you are the menu itself. You are being eaten, traded, you know, and every single moment. And this is where the political awareness of our leadership is not really there.

Amr Aljowaly: [00:57:00] They haven’t got it, and they haven’t done anything about those kinds of things. And I think we are moving now from what we moved from, the political colonisation, to what’s so-called the digital colonisation that is coming. And this is why I am being very, very provocative in this end. And again, I’m so sorry to say that, but I’m afraid that we have lost that battle.

And I give you not, by the way, it’s not only one give you to illustrate what I’m saying, a Pentagon general set in the operational room and asked Elon Musk to reorient his satellite to further cover part of Russia in order to allow drones to get into the Russian territory. And I must say, no, I am not doing that. He’s the man who owns the infrastructure. He said, no, I’m doing that. So, who is the power? The most powerful country, the Pentagon generals, are asking an individual who owns the infrastructure to do something, and he does not.

Same thing for NASA. SpaceX was actually owned by the government, and now it is just being privatised. Private entities are doing whatever they want to do based on their return on investment in profit in business. And we are just sitting here talking about ideas, you know, what should be done, etc.. Yes, we know what has to be done, but how to do it? How do we put resources into it? Nada. Zero. I’m sorry. Over to you.

Katherine Getao: [00:58:26] Okay. Thank you for showing us where the rubber meets the road. So I’ll turn to Nina. My hand is up already.

Amr Aljowaly: [00:58:37] She said. She wanted to.

Katherine Getao: [00:58:43] Yes. I’ll turn to Nina. And now you’re the AI ambassador, and I believe AI holds a lot of potential for the African continent, but I suspect that it’s not going to emerge in exactly the same way as it’s being used in other parts of the world. Do you see a different flavour to AI, and what kind of policies or developments are needed in Africa to help us make the best possible use of this emerging technology?

Nnenna Nwakanma: [00:59:23] That’s a good question. Present. So here is the thin,g I wanted to hop in when Mokhtar was speaking to us again as Africans. There. If you read the Africa Digital Compact itself, you find that proverb. Those who wrote this, I mean, the folks who compiled this, have done a great job.

When you have a broom together, it is hard to break because all the broomsticks are joined together. And that is the idea of African integration. If we don’t stick together, we are going to be broke,n and that is what is happening in our data world. I want to speak to Tim, my good friend Tim, who’s talking about the EU and data.

The link you gave is the EU portal to people who don’t need a visa. Now, maybe you’ve not ever you’ve never applied for a Schengen visa before. You’ve not applied for a UK visa before. When I applied for the last UK visa. Let me tell you what information I gave. I gave my fingerprints. I gave, of course, the normal info on my data, on my bio data, and on my passport. Do you know what other info the UK government and other EU governments ask us for? Ask every African brother you will. You will show your your work your work contract. That is all of your professional information.

Nnenna Nwakanma: [01:00:58] The EU wants it. You will go to your bank and get your last six-month bank statement. And you get the bank to also to say that this is it. They won’t allow the one you printed offline. Then you have to go to your bank and get that statement, and send it to the EU and the UK, for that matter. The UK asked me for my property papers.

The land that I bought. I had to scan all my land papers and give them to the UK government. And then your children’s information. The UK has it, and for some of you who are going to school, you even have to go to a physician to do a test. A health, a test. So the EU or whoever already has all of that data on us, and they are sharing it among themselves. Now there is the terrorist, whatever, like you say. And of course, you know, recently the US has said you have to give them access to all your social media platforms.

So what data is it that that we are holding to ourselves? Which EU citizen will give all of that information to an African government because they are applying for a visa? That is the question. So unless we as Africans join together and say this is our own dignity. This is what we want for our people.

Nnenna Nwakanma: [01:02:30] We want our health data to be well managed because data is data. Whether it is my personal data is my personal data. And once I give it to one EU country, all of the EU countries have access to it. But then we are saying all of the African countries won’t have access to it. So who? Who are we cheating? We are cheating ourselves.

Alright. I’m currently working on health data across Africa. There are some countries that have said our data must be within our country, but then you easily give it to an NGO that is based in France. You easily give it to one who is based in the UK. And then they will even market it to us as development.

Recently, I’ve had people come to me to say Would you want to have? What is it? There’s one that Estonia does. You have residency. That is the New Deal. I mean, are you are you people sleeping or haven’t you been approached? Would you want residency in the EU? You just pay €50,000. You don’t really need to live there.

You still remain in Africa, but just bring your money there. I mean, who are we? What are we? Are we lizards? Are we grasshoppers? Are we useless people? No, we are people with a dignity. We are people with a history, with people with a future. I will stop there.

Mwende Nirjani: [01:04:01] Yes, Nana, I hear you. I. I find it ironic sometimes that I’m invited to speak in Europe. Invited? And then when I go to get the visa, they ask me for the title deed. The last six months of bank statements, and once or twice, I’ve been tempted to be undiplomatic and just say, If your Ministry of Foreign Affairs believes that I’m fit to speak at your conference. I don’t quite understand why you seem to have some suspicion that I may have other motives for entering your country apart from this letter of invitation.

So yes. Africans have suffered a lot of humiliation. They have disclosed a lot of their personal data in circumstances which are not ideal. So perhaps we can also use this technology to protect our citizens from this kind of obtrusive data capture while at the same time giving peace to our partners across the world. That our citizens are not travelling to engage in crime or to surreptitiously emigrate.

Nnenna Nwakanma: [01:05:30] And after you give all of that data, you are not even sure that you will get the visa.

Katherine Getao: [01:05:37] Yes. And sometimes we also don’t know what they do with their data after you’ve either been given or not given the visa. It’s not clear whether it’s destroyed or it’s kept and used. So these are all things that must be addressed, even by the Peters who are in the data governance field. Please have these questions answered for us.

So we’re going to the last part, which is on the acceptance and the buy-in, and the implementation of this compact, which is a political agreement, but really, which must be brought to the ground as we do that, please continue to put your questions and comments in the chat. And I think we’re doing well on time. So it may be possible for 1 or 2 people to raise their hands and address their question to different panel members.

So as I move to the section on acceptance, I’ll turn to Mokhtar and say, What roles do you see the government taking, the private sector, civil society, and academia to make this compact a reality? What do we need to do practically?

Katherine Getao: [01:07:04] Catherine. The standard answer to that was defined in 2005 during the weeks, whereby anything related to digital, that is, three major multistakeholder actors, the government, academia, private sector and civil society. Now, though, if I may comment on two are the academia. Most of it is owned today by or supported by the government. So it’s part of the government anyway.

And the civil society is still seen by most of the government, as you know. How can I say a confrontational kind of entity? And they are not very much associated to that. So basically it’s the responsibility of the government and or what is happening in the country in terms of the private sector, knowing that most of the private sector draws its businesses from the government. So you go back again to the government.

Which actually and the government are the one that has actually adopted, you know, those big programs through the O through the. But come back to the question in the field of digital, who owns the national infrastructure? Who owns it is the government. Are they capable to influencing, you know, the foreign private sector? Who is there? That is the question. Do we have any influence? Can we be in a position today to adopt anything? That is, how can I say, against the licenses or the agreements signed years back, 20 years ago, with some private entity that is operating now in the country? The people sneaked into the country very, very easily.

Moctar Yedaly: [01:09:04] They start with a voice license. Then we stop the ISP? Is it not allowed to grow, and does that operator become de facto an ISP? And then with the variants of 2G, 3 G, 4G, 5G, and probably 6 G, they become just owning everything there. And this license after license. And we think that the license fees, which give you fresh money for the government, are something they can live with.

And you know, the business people understand that. So everything is turned around. The government is still. Tied by those kinds of agreements. We need to wake up governments. African governments, together or individually, need to wake up, you know, and just say in this context, in this digital world today, with the AI, with everything, with the evolution of technology, we cannot allow ourselves to think analogically as we thought in the 90s. The 90s were voice. Today, data and an example have been provided by Nina. Or how your data can be abused and used are everywhere.

And today if you own data, you own everything. Data is a power. I’m not saying now it’s oil. I’m saying data is a power. You own it. You own everything. You can change people. You can erase them. You can kill them. You can destroy critical infrastructure. You can’t do whatever you want, specifically with the new kind of services that are again being provided to us.

Moctar Yedaly: [01:10:45] We say, okay, we buy you the infrastructure, we buy you, give you a car, we sell you a car, we sell you any infrastructure you can use. But we will guarantee you a lifetime service by accessing remotely to your car or to your fridge or to your cell and maintain it for you or to even, you know, elevate whatever it is in your building.

So you see, that is where most of us have not woken up. The government needs to wake up and start thinking about how to really take over. I am not using the word nationalisation. That is scary for some people, right? I’m using take over. But your data. I’m not even saying you take over your own data, where it is going, and how they are being used. It’s not surprising that Europeans, you know, created the GDPR, right?

And it’s not surprising that they are now questioning the safe harbour agreement they have with the United States. Everybody is now talking about protecting your data. We are not Africans. Yes, we do have the Malabo convention. Beautiful, right? We have our data protection agency there. We have our national laws. But practicability in practice. Right. We don’t know how to localise our data and how to control how it’s being used. That is the first and unique thing that the African needs to take over in order to avoid digital colonisation. What are you?

Katherine Getao: [01:12:20] Thank you for that. I feel the same concern that we need to really focus on data and making sure that it is both protected for our use. Not just protected, but protected for our use and available for our use. Now, I’m responding to what is in the chat. So the questions may not be exactly what I had advertised before.

Maybe Nyambura Benjamin has asked a question about. Is there any African country that has enjoyed significant development due to the internet and digitisation? And I believe Kenya has. So, even as you answer the question about what governments and other stakeholders need to do, maybe you can tell us a little bit about what digitisation and the internet have achieved in Kenya, and how the government has been involved and can continue to be involved in those developments.

Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u: [01:13:26] Thanks. And yes, I will just progress with the case of Kenya. That. Yes. When there is digitisation, there is a linkage to GDP. I know there’s no clear research or clear figures that I can quote, but clearly, when you look at the case of Kenya, where digitisation has been happening for the last, probably like almost 20 years, since the strategy document was done in 2007, that has led to quite a number of strategies that have been implemented, including the citizen.

I know it has its own challenges, but basically, through citizens who are people have been able to be served effectively and efficiently from whichever part of the country they are in, and that has reduced the transportation time and the like. And again, when it comes to connectivity, and I know quite a number of countries are focused on broadband connectivity again, up to the rural areas. That has improved in terms of health.

I remember when I was doing e-health in 2004, using visas that were very expensive and very exclusive, which you would find civil servants, like doctors, in very remote parts of the continent. The case of Mandera, Garissa and the like, where they are, they have no second person to to get a second opinion. But the moment we are able to implement eHealth, then that becomes much easier. But again, what we are saying is that these are digital public infrastructures that have been implemented in silos, but again, without our safeguards in them, designed by security by design, inclusion by design and the like.

Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u: [01:15:21] And the challenge without having these safeguards is that we end up assuming that, as in the case of Kenya, we have a citizen with over 22,000 services. Then we assume everybody is accessing while in a real sense, then we have not included those who are in rural areas, those who are disabled differently, those who are income cannot afford to keep on spending money because again, without meaningful access, then that means you are spending more time trying to log in, and with that then you are excluded.

So yeah, it. There are countries that have progressed, but are safe by design. But inclusion by design needs to be incorporated as we are deploying these digital services. Coming to our second question, what role should the various stakeholders play? And I, like Mokhtar, have analysed the four key stakeholders and the fact that they all need to do what they need to do because again, when we start having the government do infrastructure again, then they are not able to do the policy.

They may end up overlooking policy development. It’s their role to ensure that the policies are there. There is an enabling environment for the businesses to flourish, for the citizens to enjoy the services and for the academia to be able to channel the skills for the young people.

Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u: [01:16:45] When we don’t, when we don’t do that, then we end up in a situation where infrastructure has been developed, but there is no policy, there are no regulations. We also need the regulators. They are very key in this era of digital space because guidelines must be there again as a continent, as a country, to ensure that we are not just giving out our data. Then we need to have very clear guidelines.

We need to have a way of following up to ensure that they are being enforced. So the government has a key role to ensure that there is political will. They are creating that enabling and regulatory environment. They are fostering collaboration because, again, all these four actors need to work together to ensure that no one is left behind.

Then, the private sector in terms of supporting indigenous SMEs. Again, we don’t want to say that we are growing as a country because we have so many SMEs in the digital space, but they are not indigenous. We are not making sure that our young people are the ones developing these solutions. They are the ones getting the data from the government because there is quite a lot of data in the government in the various sectors that can be used to solve our socio-economic challenges, and that can be contextualised up to the village level.

Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u: [01:18:02] Because again, once we do that and the private sector is supporting this, then we are able to move. And for academia, it’s about knowledge creation and sharing skills. And that is where again, the private sector needs to work with academia to ensure that the young people we are channelling through our education systems are fit for the market, and they can only be fit if we are providing internships.

If we are working together with the students at the university level to ensure that they are solving real problems through working with the private sector, the government, and then when it comes to the civil society, then we have to ensure that the government is accountable, the private sector is accountable. We are the voices of the people.

And for us to do that, we have to work with all these stakeholders. We have to ensure inclusion and rights protection, as we have seen a situation where we are all in the digital space. But data, individual data, is not protected, and individuals end up suffering because of what they thought they were contributing, probably in an intellectual kind of way.

But it ends up being misinterpreted, and it is the role of civil society to educate the masses, again, working with the development partners, working with the government, because again, we are saying we want every person to be able to be in the digital space from wherever they are.

Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u: [01:19:22] Then they must be skilled; they must have these safeguards to ensure that they are safe in that particular area. So again, in terms of data protection, everybody has a role, including the individual themselves, and we have to take the initiative to educate ourselves.

But we need now to work collaboratively because again, we are saying employment is not there and that’s employment we want to create and we want to create these synergies between all the sectors to be able to innovate and create jobs at the rural areas, because, again, we don’t have to come to the urban areas to to have our youth coming to the urban areas. It’s about contextualising solutions, looking at the agricultural sector, how can you ensure that the data that is with the business community, the government can be used to solve local problems, can help farmers be able to use AI and solve their challenges. We can use e-health. We can use e-education. All these young people who are jobless can be channelled to use their skills and their talent to solve these problems. Thanks.

Katherine Getao: [01:20:33] Okay. Thank you, Margaret, for that very comprehensive look at the various roles that the stakeholders need to play now. We’re nearing the end. I’ve seen a few comments, and And maybe, Nina, as you give us your closing remarks, could you combine them by addressing Lem’s concern about AI safety and Michael’s concern about having African artificial intelligence? So if you could just address those two issues, as you also give us your closing remarks on everything you’ve heard and said during this panel.

Nnenna Nwakanma: [01:21:22] Okay. So I’ll I’ll be brief because I’m mindful of our time. And Africans are human beings like any other. And like I said at the beginning, Africa doesn’t have the Africa we want, which is not the one that will go and bomb other countries. That’s not what we’re looking for.

What we are looking for is the well-being of our own people, for our own selves. I think that has been my initial submission, and that will also be my last submission. Now there are there is no thing called an African internet or an African AI. We can talk about this technology for us, for our own problems. I want to raise something, especially in relation to Benjamin Atkinson, this question.

Success is measured differently. I think we started this with how success will look. We in Africa should have a different way of measuring things. And I’d like to bring in dignity as part of our own measurement for success. Inasmuch as the West wants to measure in dollars and euros. I think that in Africa, we should adopt a slightly different measurement for when we succeed, because success is not just how far you come, but how far you come from where you were.

You see, someone may run 100m, and we applaud that person. But he started running from 50m. Those of you who are measuring from having internet connection, from having radio, from having TV, from having electricity, you are not measuring on the same rate.

Nnenna Nwakanma: [01:23:09] For those of us who are starting from zero, and maybe we’ve made it up to 60. You see, when you start from zero and you are 60, and then the one who starts from 50 is at 100. That one has already run 50, but you’ve run 60 because he started from zero. As a reminder. M-Pesa is from Africa, and today, mobile money is all over the world. I went to the US. They have started adopting mobile money. Is that the success of digitalisation in Africa?

I’m from Nigeria. I remember walking into the Nigerian embassy in France and telling them, Look at my passport, I only have a few pages remaining. They said, Oh, we will pull up your data from our database, and we will just re-issue your passport. My Nigerian passport was reissued in less than five hours. I paid online, I went there, my biometric was renewed because I’ve grown older. Every other information looked the same.

They printed my passport, and I walked out. I showed it to my friend who is from Switzerland, and she’s like, It’s not possible to renew a passport in one month. I said I renewed my passport. I’m a Nigerian. That is a great country. My people. You go to every Nigerian market. The banking in Nigeria is extremely, extremely is smooth. You transfer money, and in the next five seconds, the money has hit the account of the other person.

Nnenna Nwakanma: [01:24:41] I am everywhere in the world, but I bank in Nigeria. Folks do not check these things for granted. We have our travel electronic tickets in Nigeria. We no longer queue up. We no longer do these things. We get a ticket electronically. For people in Europe, they take it for granted.

But for people in Nairobi who don’t take it for granted, because we know how we used to suffer to get paper tickets, right? We know how we used to suffer to go to the city. And they tell you, oh, that person has just gone away because we didn’t have a phone, but now we have WhatsApp. Even our mothers and our brothers who cannot read or write, they can leave, can leave notes, voice notes for us, and we communicate. I’m just saying that, folks, Africa is a great continent. We have youth. We have the thing that we have, we have the spirit.

We have this way of doing things. Communalism, we call it. That is the spirit of ubuntu. That is more than money can buy. And I think that again, one day at a time, one nation at a time, one digital idea at a time, one at a time, one at a time, one e-commerce at a time, one e-commerce passport at a time. And one day you will see us, one Africa in unity. Thank you and God bless Africa, as we always say. Because Africa. Thank you.

Katherine Getao: [01:26:18] Thank you very much, Nina, for that rousing message about One Africa. I’d like to really apologise to Tangey Mariga, who’s had their hands up for a long time. I’m sorry. I was busy monitoring the chat. And I missed you. Please, can Tangency be given microphone access so that they can ask their question? And then I’ll move on to Nyambura and Mokhtar to finish. Tanguay.

Tangai Marega: [01:26:56] Yes. Distinguished delegates and highly esteemed panellists are chairing and coordinating and steering this kind of inspiring debate about the Africa we want and the future of the global compact within the digital space. I just stand here not to subtract or devalue or debase any kind of you know, input that had been put forward here, but just to endorse and to validate from a listening point of view, from what I hear, the voices that are sounding and coming from Africa. I’m currently based in the United Kingdom, but originally from Zimbabwe. So I think just validating from our cultural ambassador.

Madam Nenna, it is, I think, an epitome or a kind of voice that is very much, you know, dissatisfied with the way we have always done things, that has become an established culture of the African way of engaging with the world. We have always operated as discrete kinds of nations and societies. Well, not societies, but just nations that are defined by the colonial borders themselves, rather than what defines our societies, because we are just united by one thing, which is ubuntu. So here we go.

We as Africa have been left behind. We are far behind the pace of change, which we are almost at the cusp of the digital Information superhighway. When we have not just the basics of are they just data that we need? So it is kind of a, a call or I would say an amplification of realising how we have so much, you know, engaged in Africa, in a commercialised world that is not very sensitive to humanity or our human centeredness, kind of an approach.

Tangai Marega: [01:29:05] We are actually a global civilisation that has begged us for multiple centuries rather than just one. How do we foster or instead inculcate that kind of political pluralism that gives that kind of pragmatic pluralism that reflects the African identity in itself? How do we and where do we start in terms of, you know, steering and devising that kind of political will? I understand so much that so many of the comments that are coming on the charts are very much against African leaders and the way they’ve always done business, which is the commercialisation of Africa, which is a fair point.

And we listen to that. But are we also not feeding into the stereotype that is part of the data, which is manipulated by those from without Africa? That is the capital on and instead find the weakest point to sideline the African society from the very kind of digital future within the global compact. I suppose the focus should be on how we can make an all inclusive, future Africa digital compact that is sensitive to our cultural diversity in a pluralistic way, in a very humanistic way, but at the same time, in a very kind of you know, universalized kind of value system because definitely Africa as a region and as a continent, we are actually the biggest in the world. Thank you.

Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u: [01:31:01] Thank you. I believe I should come in with my closing comments. Yes.

Mwende Nirjani: [01:31:10] Yes. Nyambura thank you. I think we have lost the doctor, but I’d like to invite you to give your closing remarks. Thank you.

Margaret Nyambura Ndung’u: [01:31:18] Okay. Thank you. I think for me, what I’ll say is that we need to digitise for the future, not for the present, as we build our digital infrastructure. Let us be very inclusive. Let’s have sustainability as a core thing, inclusion as a core. And for me, I look at digital public infrastructure that is inclusive, that is sustainable, and that is secure as the key priority that will ensure that going forward, we are building digital infrastructure that is meaningful.

They are citizen-centred, and they address the emerging challenges that we have now and going forward and without this kind of infrastructure, the citizens would not be able to access. We need to create businesses through the private sector. We need the government to be able to offer services. And we also need regional integration.

And I think also we need to to contextualize the challenges we are having and are as a continent, see what solutions are that are cut, are cross-cutting, and are ensure we are coming up with the regional policies, regional guidelines that we can all adapt to and ensure that are the challenges we are having now and we have had in terms of visa, in terms of movement and the like. I think it would be very unfortunate if in five years, ten years to come, we’ll be talking about the same.

So I think we have to be proactive and ensure that as we are building systems, we are carrying everyone along. We are realising that we are transforming things, and if we are making sure that all services, government services, must be offered through the digital space, then everybody must be carried along. We must build skills, we must ensure that we are focusing on people who are enabled differently, so that going forward, we have a digital future or digital space that is inclusive. It’s safe. It is sustainable. It is meaningful, and we all can get what we need from that particular space. Thanks.

Mwende Nirjani: [01:33:38] Thank you. Oh. Thank you. You’re back. Welcome back. Yes. Yes. I’m so sorry. I don’t know how I dropped off. But thank you very much for continuing the flow and and nyambura. So Mokhtar, I believe you have a minute or two just to give your last word, and then I can sum up and we can close. I’m sorry for running over time.

Moctar Yedaly: [01:34:05] No, no, that’s fine. I actually have said most of what I wanted to say, but just to reiterate something very important, that digital technology represents the greatest opportunity for Africans to really look into the 21st century and to equally develop themselves like other countries.

We have shown that we do have great minds, and we can build something. But we have also shown that we are not actually capable of really building and implementing those big plans we do have.

We need to rethink that. We need to revisit that. And more specifically, we need to rethink how we’re going to protect our daughters, how in this complex situation in which we’ve been for the last 25 years in terms of, you know, giving up on our.

How can I say, authorities on our national infrastructure? How are we going to survive by protecting our data and using the ICT for our socio-economic development and rather than just letting ourselves be dominated, colonised, whatever you call it, or being abused or whatever. But bottom line is we need to start taking care of our data governance and see how best we can leverage the benefits of digital technology. Thank you very much.

Katherine Getao: [01:35:46] Thank you very much. Mokhtar. And really, we’ve had excellent panellists and excellent participants. And I believe you should all be putting flowers for yourselves on this medium. We’ve heard that the African Digital Compact has a very high aspiration for every citizen in Africa and in the diaspora. We’ve seen that it has aligned with global and African documents, and it is applicable and practical for the needs that we have in Africa today.

And I believe after today, there will be acceptance and buy, and all of you will be involved in making sure that this African digital compact becomes a reality and that we carry a united voice to the global stage, restoring the dignity of Africa and its citizens and empowering them and innovating using our digital technologies.

Thank you very much for joining us today. I beg forgiveness for the seven minutes we have overrun. I thank the technical team from Diplo, Arvin and your team. I thank Wendy and especially I thank our panellists Nyambura, Nina and Mokhtar and also Ambassador Ammar, who have really said very, very important things. Thank you very, very much, and I hope you’ll join us in the next quarter for our final