The 12th to the 13th of May marked a significant point in the East African Community’s (EAC) journey to digitalisation, as members of the Regional Economic Community and invited stakeholders, including the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), met to discuss ways to position the region as a digital leader in the African continent and to furthermore unite East Africa towards a single digital market.
The leaders from the Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania as well as digital leaders, policymakers and stakeholders from across the globe gathered in Tanzania to continue a series of discussions which began in July 2022, where the EAC Digital Transformation Strategy (2024-2030) was adopted. The region’s aims towards digitalisation was further emphasised at the EAC Regional Digital Transformation Conference in 2023, in collaboration with the European Union (EU). The EAC Digital Transformation Strategy serves as a blueprint to foster a vibrant, secure, and inclusive digital environment in East Africa. The core aim of the Strategy is to establish a single digital market within the EAC, enabling seamless cross-border digital transactions for businesses and consumers.
The Digital Transformation Strategy further aims to leverage endorsements of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Digital Trade Protocol and African Union (AU) Digital Transformation Strategy to enhance connectivity, foster a digital economy, promote sustainable development and create a human-centric digital transformation in East Africa.
The Forum on the Implementation of the EAC’s Digital Strategy, hosted this week, developed the EAC’s primary goal to develop a single regional digital market for digital trade in East Africa. The event focussed on reviewing the progress of digital integration, engaging private and public sector stakeholders and identifying policy, infrastructure and investment gaps in the EAC’s approach to increased digitalisation.
As the Secretary General of the EAC, Veronica Nduva emphasised the opportunity for the region to democratise access, accelerate inclusion and ensure that all East Africans have the opportunity to participate in the digital economy through the development of digital public infrastructure.
Opportunities for growth through the Digital Transformation Strategy
1.Digital Single Market Expansion
Embedded in the Digital Transformation Strategy 2024-2030 is the EAC’s desire to establish a digital single market in Africa by 2030, where individuals and businesses can seamlessly access and engage in online activities. This initiative provides the opportunity for easier cross-border trading, particularly where a regional e-commerce system with harmonised policies could lower cross-border transaction costs thereby making the East African economy attractive to sectors including fintech, e-logistics and digital service.
East Africa’s ambitions for a digital single market coincide with that of the AfCFTA, where at the AU level there are hopes that Africa would see reduced legal and technical barriers to trade – through the establishment of a continental digital single market.
2.Infrastructure Investment
The Digital Transformation Strategy has four pillars: enabling environment, policy and regulation; digital infrastructure; digital skills & human capacity and digital innovation & entrepreneurship. The forum reinforced the region’s aims to improve digital infrastructure investment into broadband expansion, data centres, cloud services and mobile networks. These investments have the potential to ensure that infrastructure gaps are covered in East Africa’s attempts to digitalise their society and market. Furthermore, it has the potential to spearhead innovation – given peoples’ easier access to internet services and information.
3.Employment & Skills Development
Through the Digital Transformation Strategy, the EAC intends to build inclusive digital skills and human capacity across the digital sciences. The strategy aims to offer a massive online e-skills development program to provide basic knowledge and skills in the digital environment to 300 million Africans per year by 2025. This could see the region creating new jobs in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), digital marketing and cybersecurity, amongst others, whilst it could also further partnerships across the regions where cross-border projects such as innovation labs and tech hubs could be developed to reach the goal of having a digitally skilled workforce.
Potential risks to the implementation of the Digital Transformation Strategy
As with the emergence of any initiative, there lies risks to the implementation and materialisation of wanted objectives. One such risk is the possible unparallel digital development that could occur within the region. Whilst these developments take place on a regional front, there exists a risk that digital development could be uneven due to political and infrastructural dynamics, thereby widening the digital divide between countries. This could stifle the objective of the Digital Transformation Strategy to ensue parallel digital transformation.
Furthermore, there exists a risk to policy and regulatory implementation delays, stalling the progression of the project. These delays may emerge due to varying challenges, including funding, disagreements over power, and administrative delays. For example, in 2013 the EAC signed the East African Monetary Union Protocol – aiming to establish a single currency for EAC members by 2024. However, due to disagreements over institutional headquarters as well as issues of political will, the target has now been delayed to 2031.
Thus, although the ambitions of the EAC’s Digital Transformation Strategy exist – it will be incumbent on the region’s leaders to commit to ushering in development to ensure the region meets the 2030 deadline. If well-executed, the EAC Digital Transformation Strategy could serve as a model for other African regional blocs seeking to unlock the economic potential of
