Digital for development (D4D)

Africa is at the heart of these devel­op­ments and it is wide­ly recog­nised that infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies (ICTs) will play a vital role for its pop­u­la­tions as they seek to become emerg­ing states.

With­in this con­text, the Direc­torate for Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion and Human­i­tar­i­an Affairs has for­mal­ly signed up to the ​“9 Prin­ci­ples for Dig­i­tal Devel­op­ment”, the result of a con­cert­ed dia­logue among the main dig­i­tal actors in the inter­na­tion­al community.

In 2021, Lux­em­bourg 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 in the ICT sec­tor. The empha­sis placed on digi­ti­sa­tion with­in Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion is not a new devel­op­ment, but the top­ic has gained fresh impe­tus in recent years. This is in line with the Euro­pean Commission’s wish to make D4D a pri­or­i­ty for inter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships in the com­ing years.

Cur­rent­ly, Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion is imple­ment­ing about 40 projects ded­i­cat­ed to the dig­i­tal and ICT sec­tor. The D4D projects tar­get, above all, dig­i­tal finan­cial ser­vices, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, telemed­i­cine and cybersecurity.

Among the col­lab­o­ra­tions between Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion and research insti­tutes in the D4D field are those with the Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Cen­tre for Secu­ri­ty, Reli­a­bil­i­ty and Trust (SnT) of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lux­em­bourg, launched in late 2020. A prime instance of this part­ner­ship is the LuxWays project, the aim of which is to train a cohort of West African experts in cyber­se­cu­ri­ty in part­ner­ship with the uni­ver­si­ties of Burk­i­na Faso and Sene­gal. The min­istry and the SnT plan to deep­en their col­lab­o­ra­tion, build­ing on these first promis­ing devel­op­ments. For exam­ple, LuxDev has been giv­en a man­date to car­ry out a study explor­ing the trans­po­si­tion of the col­lab­o­ra­tive research mod­el. This mod­el aligns the activ­i­ties aris­ing from the research needs of the local pri­vate sec­tor and seeks to make them con­verge with research projects to cre­ate lead­ing-edge exper­tise that is firm­ly root­ed in the eco­nom­ic fab­ric of part­ner coun­tries in the West African region. In the field of cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, it should be not­ed that in 2021 Lux­em­bourg joined the Glob­al Forum on Cyber Exper­tise (GFCE). The pur­pose of this mul­ti-stake­hold­er plat­form is to build capac­i­ty and exper­tise in cyber­se­cu­ri­ty. The Forum has more than 115 mem­bers and part­ners, includ­ing gov­ern­ments, inter­na­tion­al organ­i­sa­tions and oth­er civ­il soci­ety and pri­vate-sec­tor oper­a­tors, as well as the aca­d­e­m­ic com­mu­ni­ty. The idea is to strength­en glob­al cyber­se­cu­ri­ty capa­bil­i­ties through knowl­edge-shar­ing, includ­ing through work­ing groups, a cyber knowl­edge por­tal and its func­tion as an infor­ma­tion exchange cen­tre, as well as through prac­ti­cal ini­tia­tives. The GFCE aims to be a prag­mat­ic, action-ori­ent­ed and flex­i­ble plat­form for inter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion. Lux­em­bourg has been an offi­cial mem­ber of the GFCE since Octo­ber 2021. This mem­ber­ship allows rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Lux­em­bourg gov­ern­ment to par­tic­i­pate in the dia­logue and thus ben­e­fit from the knowl­edge shared with­in the frame­work of this forum. After it joined, Lux­em­bourg also took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to send a let­ter of sup­port for Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty for Devel­op­ment (Cyber4Dev), an eco­nom­ic inter­est group­ing (EIG) that wish­es to be recog­nised as a part­ner by the GFCE, and whose appli­ca­tion requires sup­port from Lux­em­bourg as a mem­ber of the Glob­al Forum on Cyber Expertise.

In addi­tion, Lux­em­bourg sup­port­ed Esto­nia for the sec­ond time to organ­ise a hackathon. The prod­uct in 2020 of a chal­leng­ing health sit­u­a­tion that required inno­v­a­tive tools to con­tain the pan­dem­ic and inform author­i­ties’ deci­sion-mak­ing process­es, the sec­ond edi­tion of this hackathon aims once again to sup­port the search for inno­v­a­tive solu­tions to the chal­lenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.