The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: Hello, everyone, we will soon be starting this session. It will be another one minute.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: Apologies for the late start of this workshop. This here I am honoring. Greetings and welcome to workshop on addressing the challenges of digital sovereignty in developing in least developed countries.
Under the subtheme, improving digital governance for the Internet we want, under the overarching theme building a multistakeholder digital future.
My name is Jimson Olufuye I will be the online moderator. Briefly about AfICTA, AfICTA is a concerned private led alliance of ICT associations, companies and professional individuals in African. It was founded in 2012 with country membership with now more than 40 countries in Africa. Our vision is to fulfill the promise of the digital age for everyone in Africa and to do that we collaborate with the African Union, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the African government, special government of the Arab Republic of Egypt and the federal government of Nigeria to the Federal Ministry of communication and information digital economy, innovation and digital economy, and agency, the Nigerian communication commission, and the national information technology development agency.
And we have the privilege to work with the SDG of the national information technology development agency, you are most welcome.
And this is done in the spirit of multistakeholder engagement, which is the bedrock of Internet Governance as outlined in the Tunis agenda of the World Summit on Information Society 2005.
(?) is an outcome of WSIS for my day job I am the principal consultant at contrary consulting limited based in (?). The organization achieved the digitalization and cybersecurity goals.
I would like to thank the host, our hosts, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for hosting the global IGF 2024. As someone who firsthand, Saudi Arabia delegation's position to (?) during the concluding stage of the CSTD working group in 2018, I am really personally thrilled that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is indeed hosting all of us and welcoming all stakeholders that is the government, private sector, civil society, the academic and technical communities at Riyadh, and I say (No English translation).
So, thank you for hosting us, shukran. My co onsite moderator speaker is Dr. Martin Koyabe, regional manager for Africa for the global forum for (?) and online moderator is Ms. Rachael Shitanda, the deputy chair of AfICTA (intergovernmental Organization).
Rapporteurs are Ms. Inye Kemabonta, and (?)
In this important important session, which is entitled addressing the challenges of digital sovereignty in developing the at least developed countries, we are going to have three rounds. A round of 25 minutes each for the speech section. In the first round I will be asking speakers the first policy question. And just before your answers, please, you will quickly introduce yourself and your designation and affiliation and then you go to the subject matter.
When it's three minutes, I will give the thumbs up and we begin to enable to conclude.
Well, the issue of digital sovereignty is a very, very crucial one, very, very important, and it's so much more important because while Africa constitutes about 70% of global population, our presence with regard to data centre and digital space about 1%.
So, we need to address the issue of meeting up even with our own industries, localizing data and ensuring that we participate in over 4.3 trillion digital economy of the world.
So, without much ado, I would like to throw in the first policy question. First of all, let me mention that, yes, we also have this other speakers with us, Ms. Ulandi Exner, that's the chair of AfICTA. She is online. Chair, are you online? Please say hello if you are online.
>> ULANDI EXNER: Good morning or good afternoon, Dr. Jimson. Can you hear me? I have also just switched my video on.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: Yeah, we can hear you loud and clear.
>> ULANDI EXNER: Wonderful.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: Please turn on your video. Please turn on your video. And.
And we also have Mr. Kossi Amessinou, the director economic activities in the Republic of Brunei. Dr. Kossi, you are most welcome.
>> KOSSI AMESSINOU: Hello.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: So Dr. Kossi is here.
We also have Dr. Melissa Sassi. Dr. Melissa Sassi, are you online?
>> MELISSA SASSI: Yeah, I am here. (No English translation).
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: (No English translation). Thank you very much, Dr. Sassi.
And we also have Jane Coffin. Is Jane around? Jane, okay, maybe she will join us.
And we also have with us my friend, Dr. Toshikazu Sakano, director of ATR Japan. SPEAKER good afternoon, my name is Sakano. Thank you for inviting me this session.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: Thank you very much. And we also have with us Dr. Martin Koyabe who I mentioned earlier, Dr. Koyabe. And Mrs. Mere Yom due maul, where is she, Mrs. Merriam West Africa IGF and our DJ is our special guest of honour.
So, I recognize Mr. Karen Boda on the line, Mr. Karen Boda, if you are there, or even of the Secretariat people for rapporteuring. Secretariat, can you say hello, if you can hear me.
Okay. I can see them online. But I believe they can hear me. All right. So, straight to the point. The first policy question. And our chair will be taking the first response to this.
In light of most developing and at least developed countries lacking the capacity of hosting the huge data generated locally and considering the (?) of digital sovereignty to the development and security of an economy, please (?) to the key challenges encountered by key stakeholders in developing and least developed countries in the implementation of local servers and the adoption of implementation policy using South Africa experience of case study and also as the second one, the what practical solution can you propose to address these challenges faced in your country.
Ms. Owe lawed a, the chair of Victoria you have the floor.
>> ULANDI EXNER: Thank you. As you already mentioned I'm the chairperson of AfICTA, I am not going to provide the background on AfICTA because Dr. Jimson you have done so already. Also, just in terms of my day job, the one that pays the bills because, you know, we do a lot for out of passion, I'm an (?) consultant, I service on various governance structures and boards within the public sector so I also hope to be bringing some of my experiences and the challenges that I experience in terms of the questions that I have posed in the context of well, in the South African context.
So, just in terms of some of the key challenges that I have and I have also got my time going here so that I don't go over time and I respect the time for other members as well. Some of the key challenges that we specifically also find in South Africa and I'm sure it is very relevant throughout Africa is the high infrastructure and capital costs. It isn't easy to build data centres. We have some amazing and incredible data centres in South Africa, but it requires huge amount of investment. And, obviously, as a country, you need to be attractive to investors so that they can locally investment or foreign investment, provide the capital for those infrastructure costs.
We also back battling terribly in South Africa with electricity challenges. We have had some reprieve from the last several months in terms of electricity. So electricity is a lot better, but with that specific challenge, that means we need backup power, backup power is expensive because it's the cost of diesel and fuel to maintain that power.
And we also battling at the moment in South Africa we are experiencing water shortages. We haven't in Johannesburg, for example, we haven't had our summer rainfall and our dams are running low on water so there's water restrictions and you also need water for cooling. So, it's really the cost around the capital.
There's also something which we battle with in our context is the limited technical expertise. We don't have the required expertise to run huge data centres to manage the data centres to secure the data centres so that is some of the challenges that we are experiencing.
We do have good regulatory and legal frameworks in terms of data sovereignty within our country so as far as information is concerned, we have, which is very similar to the GDPR in the European Union we have what's called (No English translation) which is the protection of personal information act and, basically, if our data or personal data has to reside in other country other than South Africa, it has to comply with privacy standards which is either equal to our own or better. So, that is pretty much how we have addressed some of the regulatory and legal frameworks.
Some of the other challenges include cybersecurity risks and data protection. We also have limited access to global technology providers. So, those are just, you know, some of the instances or some of the challenges that we experience in terms of the digital sovereignty in South Africa.
Doctor, you have also indicated see, I've got about 20 seconds left. Just how we would deal with some of those challenges at a very high level, quickly, we would like hybrid and multicloud approaches, just to ensure that data is residency. We need a stronger data sovereignty framework. And we also need local data centres and co location in terms of data sovereignty.
Chair, I will pause now to give the floor back to you and I'm happy to take further questions at the next round. Thank you, Chair.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: Thank you very much, our distinguished chair. That was quite a lot packed in 3 1/2 minutes. Thank you very much.
Dr. Kossi. Move up to two in the global cybersecurity index. Maybe you don't have any other challenges anymore. Do you still have challenges like South Africa?
>> KOSSI AMESSINOU: Thank you, Chair, we have more challenge. Data centre is also a challenge for us. We know our country have many cultural experience to have many video. We have within two days for both of these, for example. Every year you have two (?) days. We need to bring all the video, put it available for everyone and let people know our culture very well.
For that, we need data centre. For this time you have just one data centre. We need to have another one, another big data centre, but we need data centre which take solar technology, for example, to let us use energy very well because energy also is a challenge for us. We need energy before use Internet. If we don't have energy, we can't have Internet. But energy before, what after and we can talk about Internet in that time.
Now hard challenge, data produce it, get it available for everyone, but (?) also accessible to that data. You have public information also for everyone. All our private service, public service today is online. More of them is online. Is only data centre.
People need to access on them. We have one add for each people in building now to access to all your public information you need. You have your ID, we call F ID. We do it with your project called woody, we have woody project here in (?) here in Riyadh where you can go to a booth (booth) and see where action, what we do for our population, every person in Benny have today one ID using their own information online, they can ask anything to government, we can ask private people, you can ask civil society, we can ask everything you need to, maybe with tax, you need to pay your tax, you need to provide also your ID. That is information I want to share at this time.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: Wow. That's quite impressive. You mean everyone in Benny has idea, national ID.
>> KOSSI AMESSINOU: Yeah.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: That is quite impressive. Good. Let's move to Dr. Melissa Sassi. Thank you, Dr. Melissa, because I know you have to wake up very early in the U.S. to join us.
You have always provided excellent advisory best practice using the U.S. experience to enlighten us more on the approach regulation in terms of what citizens need to do.
Please, what is your view about this, adopt the sovereignty. In view of how the U.S. taking data sovereignty very seriously. Thank you Dr. Sassi.
>> MELISSA SASSI: I spent a lot of my time working with highly regulated industry. Financial services is really my focus right now and if you think about the kind of data that is collected, no one wants their sensitive data, you know, in the hands of nefarious characters, right?
So, I think, you know, from my perspective, and I put some slides together but I won't share my screen in light of time. You know, I kind of look at things from a few different perspectives. I look at it in terms of security, you know, privacy, residency and the ownership structure, if you will, of the data centre.
And I kind of also think about it from the perspective of, you know, what's the impact of, you know, having a local data centre? And in my mind it's kind of bigger than just looking at it from a sovereignty perspective. It's also kind of thinking about what impact on economic growth those data centres, you know, would have in local communities. You know, what it might bring in terms of infrastructure, you know, development, social benefits, you know, support, you know, of local authorities, if you will, in the form of, let's say, you know, tax revenues whether that's sales use, income, blah, blah, blah.
But, you know, those are I think some of the pros. You know, I think it gives, you know, local communities or local government, you know, local, you know, people, companies, what have you, increased autonomy, control over their digital ecosystem. And that ensures a reduced reliance on external entities.
Naturally, assuming you have got the right technical infrastructure set up, you've got the right skills, and folks who are managing that data centre, you have an enhanced security. And as I mentioned skills, leads to jobs, blah, blah, blah.
But lots of challenges and I have heard some folks already share some of those. In many cases, many of our communities across the continent or any other developing countries, there's inadequate access to reliable interpret, communication technologies, even electricity. And it requires a dependence on foreign tech and, you know, in many cases relies on international tech companies. And, again, that kind of connects into skills. It could connect into budget access to funding.
As one of on you are colleagues mentioned, running a data centre is not you know, is expensive. And it takes a lot to stand up a data centre, to run that data centre. Lots of innovation, I think, is happening and people are looking at the role of green hydrogen or all of the many innovations that are possible to bring down the cost of running a data centre.
But it also kind of, I think, could bring an overemphasis on localization. And I am big on partnership. So, what role does having such stringent policies, you know, in place, how does that impact collaboration? Does it bring more innovation or does it stifle innovation?
I think the vote is probably still out on many of those things. But I think truth be told, we have big skills gaps across many of our countries, including the developed world.
I am not sure where I personally stand, to be honest. I think when I think about my data, I would like to understand where it's going, whether it's you know, everything is, you know, being handled appropriately, whether it's in, you know, use, in flight, whether it's being stored, and I think that that same safety and security needs to be applied, you know, elsewhere.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: Yes.
>> MELISSA SASSI: I look forward to seeing how the world is going to continue to evolve, and I also look forward to seeing more, you know, locally grown countries, especially companies, especially, you know, tech ventures. We often think about innovation coming from the valley. I think tomorrow is where we see, and even today, yesterday, innovation coming from the village.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: Yes.
>> MELISSA SASSI: Thank you. And let's go build those villages.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: That's great. Thank you for that encouragement, the focusing on digital sovereignty empowers local businesses and local interests.
You also mentioned issue of collaboration and partnership. And I know Dr. Martin is very versed in the area of collaboration, really capacity development as has been mentioned.
As you see being progressing concerning handling these challenges. Dr. Martin.
>> MARTIN KOYABE: First of all, thank you so much. As introduced earlier, my name is Dr. Martin. And I am involved with GFC within Africa.
Let me shed some light as my previous colleagues have already shed light on the challenges. But more importantly be guided by the current statistics that we have. When you look at Africa today, we have roughly about just below 100 data centres that are probably of tier 3, tier 4 and above. When you look again within Africa, we are not using optimizing what we call renewable energy in terms of really making sure that we conserve on energy as alluded by our chair in South Africa and also with Benin as an example of where energy, we don't use renewables. I know we have a lot of solar but on record, I know that (balin) I know there are few countries that do have renewable energy for data centre running and so forth.
Again, when you look at Africa in terms of its capacity building which is where we see it, we have seen there is a comment that has come out on the skill sets of individuals who can run data centres. So we find the capacity to be able to have skilled engineers, to be able to work within data centres is a little bit limited within the continent. Not because we don't have people. It's just because we don't have the favorable conditions maybe whether it is incentives that we give to these individuals for them to remain in that particular market.
But where I see specific challenges that we have seen within the continent is things like, for example, the barriers to international trade. We are seeing that when you have data localization, the rules might be tighter and, therefore, what happens is that multinational companies might find it a little bit of a problem to trade within those particular countries. And this is a challenge, which requires also integration so that we can be able to work across borders in fact we were in a situation this morning talking about borderless African, especially when it comes to data and, of course, we can't be able to have cross border data transfers because of the trust levels that we have, infrastructures not built with our neighbors to the level that we want to trust them in that sense.
There's also the restriction around fragmentation of the market and here we are looking at two areas. So, there's one where we look at isolation in terms of the global market, that is restriction of policies within the least developed countries and developing countries participating in the global digital economy.
We also are seeing there is an increased operational cost, meaning that localization requires or, rather, leads to sometimes inefficiencies which we don't use in our own countries and that sometimes can lead to operational cost.
And then the last thing that I really wanted to point out as way barrier that we are seeing is the issue around the impact on the small businesses and startups. I think it has been mentioned here.
Let's look at the statistics. In Africa today, nearly most of the economies of Africa, 75% of their GDP depends on small to medium enterprises. So, if that sector is impacted by any of what we are saying here, whether it's data localization, fragmentation of markets, then we also impacting economically in those particular economies.
And I can see as one is the issue around startups which struggle to meet the localization requirements, for example, because it's very restrictive or very high to afford.
Then we also have the issue around limited access to global platform because by that time when you localize, you don't provide a platform, then you are limiting the marketing of this particular startup so that's an inhibiting factor.
But there could be a light at the end of the tunnel. So what I was trying to do based on what we said, so the first thing we see here is there's a need for harmonizing policy. We have just had a discussion around Africa having a continental data policy that can be adopted by many regions and countries that need to harmonize. But even in harmonization, we are calling for what we call layered harmonization. For example, let's make sure that the infrastructure in ekeos countries is up to standard so we can be able to build data centres. Let's make sure we have a strategy for data centres in terms of the green data centres which we don't have a framework in the continent. Let's also have something that says we have the top level domain names being used within the countries we are talking about. Therefore the layered approach is so significant.
And then the other one is the area around capacity building and the GFCE we have taken a deliberate and very purposeful approach to actually look at the bottom up approach. So, we are looking at the middle tier management to train them so they can have a south to south interaction, to bring the expert within the south to south collaboration to help converge the development and making sure that we have solutions.
I will give an example. If there's an engineer in Benin who is well known, I'm not saying my colleague here, but someone in Benin she or he has the expertise we require then this person can be in the he canos region or be able to help other countries. The south to south intervention in terms of experience something want to do.
Two other points I want to say before I put down the mic is PPP. We have to exploit the private the public private partnership because the PPPs bring what we call the expertise, the investment, and more importantly, they will be able to solve the problem of this inhibiting of data moving from one country to another and also making sure that countries are able to have proper ecosystem for startups.
And then lastly, encourage innovation so we don't stifle it. Thank you.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: Fantastic. Public private partnership, layered regulation, regulatory framework.
Would be interested in hearing (he canos) (?) in Japan, in terms of data centre management, data sovereignty, localization. How is the regime like in terms of even business data, citizen data, primarily in Japan or they are outside Japan. Dr. Sakano, please, kindly intervene SPEAKER thank you very much, my friend. My name is Toshikazu Sakano from ATR. ATR is advanced telecommunication research institute based in Kyoto, Japan. And I am working for research and development of ICT for digital second measure. But in the past I used to work for NTT, the biggest telecom company in Japan.
And let me introduce about the data handling. I explain in NTT. About 2000, 2000 to 2005, entity communication, entity communication is one group companies of NTT. And I used to work for that company.
In that company, the company has many data centres worldwide. And our company's data was stored in a data centre in Japan. But also in the West Coast of the United States. And this data centre were interconnected using submarine optical fiber cable with over 10 gigabit per second or something like that.
So, once company created the data, the data is stored in the data centre in Japan, but at the same time, the data is transferred to southern (?) away in West Coast data centre for security and many other ways.
Why we could do that is that West Coast data centre in United States was owned and operated by NTT. So, the distance and the country, we don't care. Who is operating or who owns the data centre is a very important issue.
And actually, another story, actually, 2011, Japan got a big earthquake and maybe over 20,000 people were dead because of that big earthquake.
And at that time, over 1 million 1.5 million telephone lines disrupted all because of tsunami, big wave.
And people in that disaster affected areas, they could not use telephone. But also they could not access to the Internet anymore.
Under that situation, people were struggling to make their living and looking for missing people and that kind of thing they are doing. So, after that big earthquake, I created a new idea of quickly restore the local communication. That we call MDRU or MDRU, mobile and deployable resource unit for quick restoration of telephone services. And after that, we move to the not only telephone, but also Internet like services quick restoration.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: Okay SPEAKER called lux, local accessibility (?) system. That kind of system we propose and propose to (toshikazu) ITU T and main thing that I have done.
In the course of proposing and research and development of ICT for disaster recovery, the stand alone very local system is very useful in very isolated areas.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: The data there is localized?
>> TOSHIKAZU SAKANO: Yeah, the data is localized. That is one solution. So here is big data centre and localized stand alone system. So you need to collaborate between big data centre and local systems to solve the problem related to digital sovereignty.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: Thank you very much.
>> TOSHIKAZU SAKANO: This is one thing. Thank you.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: There's need to collaborate, there's need to collaborate and as a Nigerian, I can see that between regulatory framework in Nigeria.
I'm sure the DG who is the authority in this area, they are the one that give back to data governance regime in Nigeria and ensuring that data is protected with regulation as soon as (?) so you intervene later in terms of rounding off, so to speak.
But, man, what is your view? I will ask Nigeria affairs concerning digital sovereignty?
>> JANE COFFIN: Thank you, I want to start by telling a story what happened to us in September. September this year, September, October. In Nigeria we experienced collapse of and was bombing of the financial sector data (jane?). At that point you couldn't access your account because there was issue of security. So, for security reasons, we were not able to access and I think one was even, was the (?), one of the banks. I won't mention the name. I think one of them was hacked (hacked). Even the digital was started and was really concerned about what was happening at that time.
And even up to now, there are still banks that still experiencing some difficulties, right, in localization of system, their data services. We don't know, I don't know whether they are hosting all their data locally or there are some that are not hosted locally.
Then near, Nigerian registration association the managers of DotAsia, in September and October, their mission stopped working and some of our websites went down. The website of Nigerian intelligence administration and the registration association, the Nigerian (?) governance forum, the (?) foundation, we have all been hosted by the Neera, what is it called, Neera data centre. So, we couldn't access our network, we couldn't access our website.
So, that's a question for me, does it work to have it totally, nationally look at or do we do plan B as they did for redundancy. That's one. We have tried in Nigeria, but we are supposed to solve that problem.
I also want to look at the demand site. When we don't have enough data generated within the nation, we cannot attract the big investors to bring in the big data centre in Benin. So I don't know what volume you have to attract the big data provider, services providers so we have the data centre that accommodate all of us.
So, as a sector, I think we should look at the demand side of data in our countries in Africa, what happens to that demand site. And again, statistics, let's do research, let's do a lot of research in this and then we can sell this research, saying to, saying to the entity, is it yes, asking them that we have enough data generated in our countries, please come and invest, you will see it and they will come investing in our countries. Again, they should be international policy by the government to say that our data should remain localized. But there must be a lot of redundancy within all collaboration as we have listened to and capacity building as the Martin has said. Both for the engineers and the policymakers. We need to built the capacity of the policymakers and we need to build the capacity of the legislators as well. Thank you.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: Excellent. Thank you so much. We need to have real redundancy, very, very important. And we are happy that (?) Japan invest in regional data centre and be looked at in Nigeria (muffled audio) and you are welcome to have the (?) (muffled audio).
This brings us to the end of round 1 it's not working?
It is working. This brings us to the end of our round 1 and I'm going to hand over to my online moderator, the deputy chair of AfICTA, Rachael Shitanda, to take this second policy question. Ms. Rachael.
>> RACHAEL SHITANDA: Thank you so much, Dr. Jimson for the warm welcome and also for a very good moderated first session. My name is KWRA*EUFP Rachael I'm the deputy chair for AfICTA currently based in Nairobi, Kenya. I have a daytime job CEO for a company called (?) tech. I am excited to be here today and also to moderate this session. We will dive right into our next question to our panelists.
How can the DLDCs balance objective of digital sovereignty with the benefits of cross border data flows for the economic growth and innovation, as we are addressing the challenges of digital sovereignty and data localization? I think we have already mentioned a bit of this in the session about localization of data and how (?) data can affect economic growth.
But I want for us to dive a bit deeper into the conversation and discuss that.
I will start with our first speaker, chair Madam Ulandi Exner.
>> ULANDI EXNER: Thank you so much, moderator, as well as my deputy chair.
While I was listening to some of our members, I have some comments and recommendations how we can address how we can balance the objectives of digital sovereignty with the benefits of cross border data flow. But while I was listening to some of the comments mentioned and some of the discussion points, something that really does concern me and something that we really have to get a handle on is do we actually know where our data is located? So, yes, we are talking about infrastructure. We have got data centres, internationally or locally, but do we can we in our hearts say we know where our data is stored. As soon as we submit our data, whether it's been for government submissions or even personal (Musa) do we as individuals know that our data (Maigari) is being stored locally or being stored internationally. That's one of the concerns that I have in terms of whether we really know where our data resides.
And who has access to our data? Who is responsible for that data, who has ownership of their data, whose the custodian of the data. So that's something that's been rattling in my mind. It has been rattling my mind for quite some time but it's brought to the floor again now. And that is why it is very important that we do have an understanding of where our data resides. And I think legislation is very, very important. We do need to understand that legislation needs to support us in the sense that if we are saying that the data can only reside locally. We also have to have a regulator that has some teeth, that is able to force regulation. So, you know, we might have instances, a regulator that doesn't really have much force and, perhaps, just slaps the organization with a small fine. So, it is really important that we do have an understanding of where our data resides.
So, be that as it may, perhaps it is important well, it may be a need that we have data residing in different continents in different countries. What is then very important is that we have to, perhaps, look at select localization so we are very specific in terms of what data is stored locally so sensitive data and personal data stored locally and less personal data is stored, perhaps, across our borders.
So, perhaps also to encourage some of the challenges or to address some of the challenges around digital sovereignty and data localization effectively, we need to incentivize innovation. We need to offer incentives for (?) and businesses to innovate locally while we are still engaging in global markets.
We also need to, coming back to ensuring that we have an understanding of where our data resides, we need to have cross border data flow agreements because, again, we might find ourselves in a situation where there's been some cyber breach and we need to be able to bring those, Dr. Sassi says nefarious people to book and we need to be able to have cross border agreements to ensure that if there are any cyber activities or cybercriminal activities that are taking place we can address them accordingly.
Other than that, Chair, I think, moderator, I will leave it at that stage. Thank you for the question.
>> RACHAEL SHITANDA: Thank you so much, Madam Chair, for that insightful feedback and contribution to the conversation.
I will go back to Dr. Martin. You mentioned a bit about a need for collaboration in terms of policymaking and also how can we put this in terms of helping? For example we can see the GDRC and how they have been able to manage to improve localization of information and also collaboration around policies on data in Europe. And Asia as well have similar policies framework among some member countries.
How can Africa can we do in order to enable the collaboration and also how can also help us in terms of economic development and also sovereignty as well? To you, Dr. Martin.
>> MARTIN KOYABE: Okay, thank you very much. Let me try and put this into perspective because I know with other speakers who will talk after me. First of all within the continent we do have what we call the data policy framework that has been established at the AU level. This is a document that actually helps to guide around how we governor data. There are two dichotomies here, when you talk about data governance we are not referring as controlling data but ideally we are saying how do we govern data within our jurisdiction and there has to be a concerted effort in terms of harmonizing whether it's policy or regulation, especially at regional level. We know various countries have their own national policies, they have their own national legislations. But the idea here would be at the regional level.
And the regional economic communities have a very, very strong opportunity and we know he can Iowa doing a good job, (?) doing a good job and others to make sure they have that regional harmony. We are also seeing continental agreements being able to be fostered. African Continental Free Trade Area, these agreements bring together African countries to be able to trade among themselves so we expect data to move from boundary to boundary. Therefore when you look at the requirements of these agreements they would only say the data would move from one boundary to another but they don't do the prescriptive component of how that can be achieved. It is the how that needs to be understood so it is more flexible, agile and it doesn't stifle innovation.
The other point is to make sure we do not necessarily we need to understand the datasets. It is a possibility that Belgium each country we can understand what's the actual data that needs to be shared and what's the data that should not be shared. So, therefore, chair, I would urge that under this understanding, we should not just talk about data per se. But we should be more descriptive and say is this the data that needs to be shared? Because to be honest, there are some specific data that just needs to be shared. But there's some data that we agree that should not be shared. And therefore, this frugal, the conservative way of how we look at data could be an enabler to move us to the next day rather than blanketing data as it is.
Then the last point that I really want to put across is that we really need to emphasize on skills. And when I am talking about skills here, we are talking about sustainable skills. Because what we have today is people get trained, they go back to their institutions, because the institutions who don't pay them well, they leave. So we don't have anything to do with loyalty that is built in. We don't have anything that does with incentiveizing these individuals to be able to be there.
One of the areas that could intervene is we should concentrate in investing in the middle tier management within the government because these are the individuals who actually do the work. I'm not saying that our top level managers are not doing the work. But we got more talking than doing the work.
So, let's concentrate on investing in that. And then let's also give them the incentive to do that.
The other point that I would like us to put up is the institutional memory. When we talk about policymakers, when we talk about leaders, parliamentarians and others, they come and go. What happens to those institutions? How do those institutions ensure that the next government and the next government will come in and they will be able to propagate the same institutional memory that we have. Many countries in the world that are doing well in this space always insist on specific institutional memory to be carried forward into the next generation.
So, we have this cycle of politicians or cycle of political cycle that really brings us back to square A. What we want to do is when there's a political change, keep the policies that are good as alluded by our moderator about policy. And then continue those policies so that we don't have policies dying because the government has left. Thank you, Chair.
>> RACHAEL SHITANDA: Thank you so much for that intervention, Dr. Martin.
I will also want to Dr. Sakano to contribute a bit on what Martin said in terms of data, cross border data and security in regards to what you also contributed first, that is maybe how secure can the data be and how the recovery mechanism can come to use opportunity for cross border data sharing in the (?) management and also continue to economic growth. As we focus on the second policy question.
Dr. Toshikazu.
>> TOSHIKAZU SAKANO: Yes. Can you hear me?
>> RACHAEL SHITANDA: Yes.
>> TOSHIKAZU SAKANO: Thank you very much. And let me talk a bit about this cross border data flowing from the point of view of digital sovereignty. The key word is layer. And layer structure and layer management and layer operation.
What I mean is the user Internet has a structure of layer, physical layer and IP layer and application layer, something like that.
And business structure is almost the same as this layer structure. So, physical layer, telecom most telecom companies are responsible for mainly for physical layer. IP layer, ISP is responsible for that. And application layer, many big service companies, SNAs and Google and many companies are responsible for providing the application layer services.
So, this layer structure is very important and we should be strictly keep this structure.
And looking at the physical layer, data centre, you can see the physical layer, IP layer, application layer, you can see the same thing. So, once data centre is structured and operated, in the physical layer, for the data centre, NGOs need to operate the computers and the (?) and once the computer is broken, they need to replace something like that.
So, that is the chance to grow the engineer if you have the data centre in your country.
So, look at the semiconductor industry. So, wow, the biggest company for production is TSMC based in Taiwan. They are focusing on, you can say physical layer of semiconductor whole country. They don't design the semiconductors but they focus on the production.
The same thing happens in IT sector. So, if you have data centre in your country and start operating it, then the engineers start growing. And cross border data will be increasing. And and that will contribute to the country's economy.
This is the kind of viewpoint. Okay. Okay. Thank you very much.
>> RACHAEL SHITANDA: Thank you so much, Dr. Toshikazu.
I will go to Melissa. On this question of cross border sharing and in terms of your experience in policymaking what do you think is your solution in terms of how as we also address the digital sovereignty and localization. Doctor?
>> MELISSA SASSI: Yeah, I have spent the last 10 years working on tech innovation. You know, before that, financial services, I did a couple of stints on Wall Street. And, you know, about a year ago, I looked at the number of companies that I work with around the world. And I realized that I had an opportunity to work with 250 companies, 250 founders, probably more because some of the companies had multiple co founders. Across 80 countries. You know, they had went on to raise half a billion dollars in investment companies and the companies are now worth a collective total of $2.7 billion. And as I looked at that, I said, wow, you know, and these innovation can come from anywhere. But, you know, I think that there is a strong connection between having a strong having strong technical infrastructure locally and, you know, as I mentioned before, I think, you know, brings jobs and also brings, you know, this concept in my mind that, you know, technology is kind of an equalizer, if you will, and I think it enables local people, again, from any village anywhere to think about what is it that I can solve, what is it that I can do in my local community bringing innovation, whether that's for that data centre or any other kind of product service, whatever, that might be relevant. And I was looking at something, I'm going to you can't see my screen but I'm going to flip it over.
I was looking at something around the size of data centres in terms of power consumption. 30 years ago a 30 megawatt data centre was considered large. Today, data centres are a normal data centre, nobody is going to blink an eye at 200 megawatts and much bigger.
As we think about the compute power that is required for AI workloads, impacts energy consumption. It impacts local communities. I think, again, that also brings innovation. If you wake up today and your village is not electrified, you don't have access to the Internet, you know, what role could, you know, building data centres in, you know, whatever country it is, again, across the continent or anywhere else, what role could that play to enable local people anywhere to think about, you know, a role bigger than them from a workforce development perspective than in the local community.
That said, I think whether these predictions are right or wrong, that's, you know, to be determined. But I was reading a study also recently saying that, you know, in the future, it's expected that, you know, the hyperscalers, that would be your, you know, Microsofts, Aves, Google, others (AWS) should take 60 to 65% cloud, having hosted in the cloud. Whereas hosted let's say privately or maybe not necessarily with one of the hyperscalers at 35 to 40%.
Who knows what's going to happen with that but I also was thinking about another thing and I was looking at a new list and I think came out probably in the last year and there's always, you know, a lot of innovation that's happening, again, everywhere. And it listed a really interesting innovations that happening around the world, some in local communities and some from innovators wherever they may come from. And what they are working on, what they are doing.
So, what I was able to look at in terms of trends was a cooling technology. How can you provide solutions that, you know, enable different tech solutions that bring more sustainable data centre running a more sustainable data centre.
I also saw some really interesting things about efficiency, again, kind of cooling, eliminating water, thinking about chemical usage and the impact that that has on the climate, which in many cases, you know, impacts developing nations at a more at a larger rate.
And I also looked at some of the innovation that's happening in terms of compute capabilities and how can these data centres think about performance density and availability. How can innovation impact, bring about zero impact on the environment.
I mentioned earlier, green hydrogen. How can local communities think about planning and building, you know, energy efficient solutions that are trusted, secure and having the right level of data centre or security, privacy, blah, blah, blah. We will see how things continue to transpire. But as I mentioned, I am always very excited about the innovation that can come from a village versus always hearing about what's happening in the valley. So, thank you.
>> RACHAEL SHITANDA: Thank you so much for the contribution. It's always nice to hear from you, Melissa. Very knowledgeable and resourceful contributor.
>> MELISSA SASSI: Thank you. Thank you.
>> RACHAEL SHITANDA: Okay. I think I will give a chance to Mrs. Mary Aduma to tell us a bit about how civil society champion, champion of the people and the society, what is your take on data localization and how that can impact the society, how can it impact human beings in terms of their rights, their socioeconomic aspect. Onto you, Mary.
>> MARY: Thank you.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: Just to know that we are short of time so just make it SPEAKER thank you very much for giving me the floor. Data is universal. Data is everywhere. I don't know if we can hold back data. And so there's data with our borders. But when we talk about cross border data, cross border data flow, there are legal issues that will be involved. There is the economic issues which Melissa had enumerated and going to (muffled audio) there are regulatory issues, data governance, data protection and some countries you may have developed your own data protection and it becomes now very difficult to relate with the other people the other countries that your data will flow so they don't have data protection law and it becomes a difficult thing for us in the civil society. We want to flow from Nigeria to South Africa with a restriction. When we get there, our data will be able to get our data and work on that or use it.
But where there is no where we don't have the same level of development in terms of regulatory issues, we have problem (mary was before).
There's security issues also for us, we want to be secured where we move from one country to the other (not Jane Coffin) and when we are looking at our data, our data should be protected. It should be secured. Whether it's flowing into another country or it's within our country.
So the cross border data flow is very, very critical for us and we also want to look at, you know, policies on cooperation where we could have the multistakeholder cooperation, multistakeholder groups coming together to say this is my issue when it comes to data flow, the academia will say this is our issue and all that and we sit on a Roundtable and find solution to just as we are doing now. Thank you.
>> RACHAEL SHITANDA: Thank you, Mrs. Mary ado a.
I will go to Dr. Kossi. What is your take on this policy question on how this can affect the socioeconomic, the innovation and also governance of the same? Maybe you can give us your piece of wisdom on that.
>> KOSSI AMESSINOU: That is very important for government because we don't have data we don't have also money. We need data to know who is able to pay. That is very important for government.
We have to know security of data is very important. We can't share any kind of data, not possible. For some sharing we need convention between two country or our country and some big companies. That is very important also to know.
But however, we have some specific big countries who have their own data centre, put in there their information like bank, finance and all specific big country have their own data. But they are supposed to have backup on national data centres also. And let's government and system protect the data because if we have any problem in data in any country, government is firstly affected. People are not possible to attend their money. That is proven for government first before we are talking about civil society and so on. That's very important.
We need to have for that key, we need to be identified online to let security people do their job very clearly and simply. That is very important for us, too. Thank you.
>> RACHAEL SHITANDA: Thank you so much, Kossi. I think Dr. Jimson, I think I have exhausted all the speakers that were contributing to the
(Overlapping speakers).
>> RACHAEL SHITANDA: And I think we can go to our next session.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: Yes, yes, yes. Thank you so much, deputy chair, Ms. Rachael Shitanda.
>> RACHAEL SHITANDA: Thank you so much.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: For bringing to the round.
Our time is very well spent. We just have barely 15 minutes. Time went so fast. I want to give opportunity to our special guests of this occasion, that's the Director General of national information technology development agency, you have done a lot. I know it. I don't want to say anything because he's the authority to speak, that is my brother Inye.
>> INYE KEMABONTA: Thank you, thank you, Dr. Jimson. And I am super excited to be here with you this afternoon. And I am really honored to contribute to this conversation. In Nigeria for the past six months, we have been working with the ecosystem on this issue of digital sovereignty. For us, when you talk about digital sovereignty, it is beyond data sovereignty and look at the oppression sovereignty, the infrastructure sovereignty, even the talent sovereignty like Madam Mary shared the challenges we are experiencing with our banking sector, which is a result of just a regulation for them to upgrade the core banking application. The co banking application is developed in another country (co ) which they upgraded using it and still they are grappling to even go back to the previous standard where they are. Even the study I tried to use my bank. A lot of features were no more there.
For me, this is part of sovereignty also. As I mentioned, we should be able to control our digital future. So, we have been working with all the data centre providers, the ecosystem, the hyperscalers and so on on how to achieve the sovereignty. And also I hear a lot of data sovereignty, localization, residence and so on so we need to create clarity about this, sovereignty is not the same thing to residency. It is not the same thing like localization. When you talk about sovereignty about having applying laws of country where the data is stored. So you can have your data anywhere. It will respect the laws of that country as well as it can respect your laws (lotion) so that cannot in any way affect cross border data flow. So you can agree even with the hyper scales to have your data sent anywhere, but that data (localization) must comply with your country's laws and regulation.
While residency has nothing do with even laws and (?) but mostly they look at it where you can store your data for tax incentives and other thing. But the big question is localization, which talks about storing and processing data in a country way to (?)
So, for me, the question or the answer to this challenge is we need to come up with data classification. Because there are sensitive data that cannot go beyond borders. And even today we are talking about even creating cloud infrastructure for military services and other things. Because today we have this, we are using the same cloud infrastructure for military, for intelligence, for civilian, which is not good for any country, in case of any war or something, if your military infrastructure is attacked, it will affect the civilian.
So, countries need to create the cloud sovereignty. So we are working hard within Nigeria where we are an issue of working with one of hyperscalers to help us develop cloud first strategy. But you know most of the time business people, they will help you, but they are there for profit. Whatever they do, they will try to benefit from it. And we have a local content regulation that talks about data localization in Nigeria, which is in clash with the cloud first policy.
So, now we are working with all the local data centre providers, the hyperscalers, how can we get them to come and have (?) data centres in Nigeria. On 10th of December, where we launch, it is local son in Nigeria. We are working with others, we are engaging them to see how they can come to build data centre or even to use a local data centres to have zones in Nigeria. Most of them, they were (?) there are challenges in Africa or we are not ready, but they don't have a clear answers to what (zone not son) so what they want us to do for them to come to African countries.
So, but we are engaging them. We know most of them, they look at the energy source, they look at the land availability, they look at the talent, which we all have this. And the only way to achieve that is through that negotiation and dialogue, which we believe very soon will have them coming to Africa, coming to Nigeria so that we can build our own data, because if you look at today, our Internet traffic, more than 85% of trans Atlantic traffic is on content. And most of this content we access our own hyperscalers and they are created locally.
You hardly see a Nigerian watching modifies or music from other part of the world. But we all watch them on YouTube and so on. So why can't we localize them?
And I spoke about it is beyond just national security, but the economic impact of it. That is the most important.
And when you talk about AI today, you cannot train your foundational model over public cloud. We need to have that compute power in our countries. We even need to have each compute power across the country so we apply our data and train the algorithm.
So, thank you very much. It's quite interesting. I will take some of the feedback to share the work we are doing on attracting the hyperscalers to Nigeria and Africa. Thank you.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: Excellent. Thank you very much, our DG.
I am trying to open to the audience just one question or one comment. Can you do it in one minute?
>> PARTICIPANT: Yeah, okay. Hello. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is barehart Forrest I am from Indonesia and currently I am studying in Ching hue university for my master degree and my research is all about digital sovereignty so I have been researching this for several years so I am really interested with the topic.
So, basically, I build at interlinked, for all of you guys accept me on LinkedIn and we can talk about it more later. The thing is regarding my thesis as well, basically we have to have a clear understanding about what digital sovereignty is. Because, like, I see every single people, every single country have its own perspective of what digital sovereignty is. And it's quite hard to be in the same frequency because, like, there is so many things to measure, right? So I hope that we can conclude with this event, through this event, through my research as well later on. I can get feedback from you and I can get your source so I can build my measurement tools and the global definition of digital sovereignty. That's it. Thank you.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: Yes, wonderful. Rest assured that we are more than ready to support your research. Because we believe in research a lot.
Well, we coming readily to the conclusion of this session. And it has been quite illuminating and there has been a number of points shared. So we are looking at takeaways and the call to action.
Well, digital sovereignty, I think DG got it right, when you are talking about did not, you are talking about ICTs, talking about different segment of the information communication technology (iCTs? (and we need to classify, Dr. Mata mentioned that, classify data. I'm a businessman and I was to tender for projects and a cloud project and if I were to use as a local centre I will not wonder project, but, you know, because it was kind of a commercial or economic data so it's not top secret data, so I could use cloud in the U.S., which our company have for data centre. And with that, I got very competitive pricing. And with that, we want (?) so there's a lot of provision under the law in Nigeria that say, okay, for government data, you must, if you were to (?) overseas, you must get approval. But, basically, at the (?) in Nigeria, which is a good one, the (?) (?) public data from commercial data. That is smart regulation. Which I really want to encourage other countries to emulate.
With that, you can do business, you can transition gradually to building a most robust local data centre.
So, with regard to takeaways, we have discussed extensively and we identified that, yes, we need to build capacity locally. We need to build an economy, have economy roll out with data sovereignty and that we should not forgot about cross border data flow. We got to cover that threat, which is indispensable to prosperity. Even though digital sovereignty is imperative.
Mentioned the AU digital data policy framework. So, we need to work with that. Okay. And then also we look at the costs, the cost of having this local is high, so just (?) with the business. So we have to look for classified data. And then also electricity is a major challenge that's been identified. But I am happy to say here that we deploy for a client 10 years ago, we deploy a data centre for a client 10 years ago and it's been running just solar. We deploy solar and everything 24/7 for 10 years, even with some cooling system. It may not be tier 4, tier 3 but at least it serves the need. We have the capability locally to really, you know, deploy the places there to really make this happen.
Then with regard to call to action, I think we talk about security, therefore, countries that yet to sign the (?) convention should do so and then the WTO ITA2 agreement, we need to look at that and the signatory to that, signatory to Budapest convention, they should be connected to that.
And then we have the issue of data abuse, breaches all over the place and that gets back to lack of confidence in a way. But we have new metrics, there's new metrics that will help us to even new assessment, it's available on the TCMM.Africa, DCMM.Africa. You can check it out. It can help your organization or businesses or even government to check the assessment level, to assess themselves, identify the gaps. And all this we are discussing measure to Sustainable Development Goal. We must not forget we want to have no hunger, want to achieve prosperity and we want to ensure that the Global Digital Compact that was signed in September 2024 in U.S. at the (?) is realized by 2030.
So, on this note I want to thank all of our speakers and moderator, our chair, Ms. Segun Omolosho, thank you so much for your speech. Melissa Sassi, thank you again. When you call, you always respond. And Dr. Toshikazu Sakano, thank you very much for those perspective, Dr. Martin, as always, thank you. And the Amazon, Ms. Mary ma Douma, we thank you all the ways on the point and, of course, very importantly I want to thank our DG, for that poignant contribution. And to the students, thank you, and everybody, thank you. I can see the grandma style of Internet Governance there. Thank you very much for supporting the (?) masters. So, thank you to all participants online, thank you, again, deputy chair Rachael Shitanda. This brings to the conclusion of this session. Thank you.
>> RACHAEL SHITANDA: Thank you, everyone.