Digital4development (D4D)

In 2018, Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion made a com­mit­ment to greater mobil­i­sa­tion of inno­v­a­tive part­ner­ships approach­es and instru­ments in the areas where Lux­em­bourg has a spe­cif­ic com­par­a­tive advan­tage, par­tic­u­lar­ly as a major inter­na­tion­al finan­cial cen­tre, and in the data and infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies (ICT) sector.

Aware of the poten­tial of the use of dig­i­tal solu­tions such as com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence or quan­tum tech­nolo­gies, and wish­ing to cap­i­talise on the exper­tise pro­duced around the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of Luxembourg’s econ­o­my, above all in the fields of research and the pri­vate sec­tor, the Min­istry decid­ed in Novem­ber 2019 to cre­ate an inter­min­is­te­r­i­al work­ing group specif­i­cal­ly ded­i­cat­ed to D4D. The aim of these meet­ings will be to put for­ward ​‘made in Lux­em­bourg’ solu­tions in response to the needs iden­ti­fied by our part­ners in the area of digitisation. 

Dur­ing 2019, Lux­em­bourg also con­tributed, togeth­er with oth­er devel­op­ment part­ners, to the set­ting up of a Euro­pean D4D Hub. The remit of this Hub will be to sup­port the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion aspi­ra­tions in our part­ner coun­tries in Africa through Euro­pean dig­i­tal exper­tise, net­works and know-how. 

While this dig­i­tal con­ver­gence holds out the promise of many ben­e­fits in terms of effi­cien­cy and impact, the risks and chal­lenges should not be under­es­ti­mat­ed: cyber­crime, the dig­i­tal divide, vio­la­tions of pri­va­cy and risks to data con­fi­den­tial­i­ty. Dig­i­tal solu­tions must there­fore be pro­mot­ed that mir­ror Lux­em­bourg and Euro­pean val­ues, being open, reli­able and inclu­sive. How­ev­er, imple­ment­ing them in con­crete sit­u­a­tions is not with­out its dif­fi­cul­ties, or even fail­ures: closed sys­tems or sys­tems pro­duced in silos, con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tion that is rigid or not in line with actu­al require­ments, etc. In order to apply the most impor­tant lessons learnt by the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty of prac­ti­tion­ers, in Decem­ber 2019 Lux­em­bourg signed up to the 9 Prin­ci­ples for Dig­i­tal Devel­op­ment — a set of prac­ti­cal guide­lines that has now been adopt­ed by more than 200 inter­na­tion­al organisations.

Specif­i­cal­ly, and in close part­ner­ship with inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions and stake­hold­ers from Luxembourg’s civ­il soci­ety, pri­vate sec­tor and acad­e­mia and research, the Min­istry is cur­rent­ly imple­ment­ing more than 40 projects with spe­cif­ic dig­i­tal ele­ments, with a pri­or­i­ty focus on Africa. In addi­tion to this ongo­ing invest­ment port­fo­lio of more than EUR70 mil­lion there is an annu­al con­tri­bu­tion of EUR4 mil­lion to emer​gency​.lu, Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Cooperation’s flag­ship project. These ini­tia­tives cov­er areas of inter­ven­tion as var­ied as the mod­erni­sa­tion of pub­lic admin­is­tra­tion, inclu­sive finance and con­sumer pro­tec­tion, infra­struc­ture and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, cyber-secu­ri­ty, telemed­i­cine, busi­ness devel­op­ment and fintech.