IGF 2022 Networking Session #8 The role of Digital Innovation Hubs to ensure digital inclusion to all, especially youth, in Africa

Digital technologies are spreading rapidly in the African continent. Digital dividends—the broader development benefits from using these technologies—have not. Digital technologies to benefit everyone everywhere requires improving the “analog” complements: strengthening policies and regulations that support actors which promote digital inclusions, such as Digital Innovation Hub.

Today, there are around 600 Digital Innovation Hubs across the African continent, at work promoting skills development, capacity building, offering safe co-working spaces, affordable connectivity and networking opportunities. However, they also demonstrate a high failure rate and varying degrees of success.

DIGILOGIC, a three-year H2020 funded project, brings together Digital Innovation Hubs from Africa and Europe aiming at foster peer-to-peer learning among DIHs, sharing best practices and jointly develop inclusive and diverse capacity building and opportunities for African youth. In doing so, it collaborates and engages with other DIHs across Africa to create synergies and maximise its impact.

DIHs keeps asking themselves the same question: how to ensure DIHs can sprout digital inclusion, ensure digital dividends are evenly distributed while remaining sustainable? How they can join forces within Africa but also between EU-Africa, based on their local communities needs and challenges?

Experts within DIGILOGIC consortium, but also from other DIHs at work to ensure digital inclusion, will ice-break the session, portraying their experience.

Policy Questions

What are/should be the responsibilities of Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs) with regard to digital inclusion? What capacity building programmes, services and infrastructure should they offer to ensure meaningful internet access, especially to African youth?
How the collaboration among DIHs in Africa and between European and African DIHs can support meaningful connectivity in emerging countries?
Which regulations / policy measure, especially in African countries, would facilitate the DIHs endeavour? 

Links https://digilogic.africa/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/DIGILOGIC_D3.2_D11_… https://digilogic.africa/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/DIGILOGIC_D5.2_D20_… https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/626981468195850883/pdf/1029… https://www.friendsofeurope.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/10-16-AEE…

DIGILOGIC has already conducted a similar workshop, in a hybrid format, in 2021, in Abuja, Nigeria, at the Afrilabs Annual Gathering, which can be watched here https://youtu.be/AbYvs5P-cGc. It promoted therefore the participation not only onsite but also online with a strong promotional campaign on social media, across stakeholders and network. The participation and interest was beyond our expectation and we would like, one year later, to hear new voices and open up the discussion allowing the participants to raise and share their policy questions.

The first 30min will be dedicated to a round of questions to the speakers (onsite and online). Between the speakers' questions, the moderator will launch relevant quick polls on slido.io open to both participants onsite and online and the results will be showed on screen. The the second half of the session will open up to the questions from the audience (onsite and online), once again using slido.io application. The three key questions will be the result of the polls run in the first part of the session.  The session will be recorded. The paper whiteboards (online and paper) will be the baseline for a final report to be widely disseminated through DIGILOGIC and its network.