81305757-Technical Assistance for Digital Connectivity Promotion in Africa

The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ) is a German federal enterprise in international cooperation for sustainable development. We work for our clients and together with our partners on more than 1,500 ongoing projects in around 120 countries. GIZ employs over 20,000 people worldwide. The promotion and dissemination of digitisation is a development policy goal in its own right, which the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) is pursuing in a special way together with its partners. On behalf of the BMZ, GIZ is implementing a lot of different digital solutions in various sectoral and global projects. In addition to the BMZ Digital Transformation Centres operating worldwide, these include a wide range of projects such as the Fairwork Foundation, the Data Economy, GovStack, blockchain partnerships, cyber security and open data for policy-making. In line with the needs and potentials of the partners, these projects support local capacities to shape the digital transformation themselves. The Data Economy Initiative focuses on political and technical cooperation in the area of data value creation, contributing to the overall objectives. The background is that geopolitical tensions around data sovereignty, the fairness of the data economy and the underlying value chains have intensified and are increasingly attracting the attention of policy makers worldwide. The Initiative promotes the development of a data-driven economy by supporting partner countries in their development and implementation of data regulation and by piloting and scaling data-driven innovation with local partners. In collaboration with the Smart Africa Alliance, national regulators, and the private sector, the project operates in three action areas: data value creation, capacities on data and data policy. In addition to these action areas, the Data Economy Initiative is cooperating with the Finnish HAUS Institute for Public Management for the purpose of promoting green and secure data infrastructure promotion, the fourth action area, by establishing the Digital Investment Facility (DIF) covering Sub-Saharan Africa. This mechanism is supporting the facilitation of investments in green and secure data infrastructure under the European Fund for Sustainable Development Plus (EFSD+) and other funding sources from European Member States, by promoting enhanced and integrated partnerships between the public and private sector, as well as financing institutions, with a focus on facilitating interactions between European and African actors in line with the Global Gateway Strategy. The resources of the facility will be prioritized to regions that show the highest demand and capability to develop feasible infrastructure projects and where also markets show sufficient demand for sustaining the infrastructure. In detail, the DIF will 1) contribute to building a favourable environment for European investments into African data infrastructure markets. For this, African key stakeholders" capacities on sound project design will be enhanced and African project developers, promoters and operators supported in unlocking European funding opportunities for public and private entities working in partnerships. To support stakeholders" capacities and project design, technical guidelines on green and secure data infrastructure will be developed in a multi-stakeholder approach. Furthermore, the DIF will 2) provide tailor-made market insights for European financiers such as INTPA, EIB, KfW or Finnfund and other European Development Finance Institutions. On this bases, promising investment opportunities will be scoped, pre-evaluated and discussed with European financiers and investors in a dedicated Investment Roundtable for synergies and better coordination of support. Ultimately, the DIF will 3) deploy project advisory services on integrated project design including pre-feasibility assessments and, in case of successful consideration by European financiers, project structuring for African promoters and developers with the aim to enhance the bankability of public-purpose infrastructure proposals addressing market failures or development gaps (additionality). European and African stakeholders such as European manufacturers, solution providers, African developers, promoters, public authorities will receive the opportunity to liaise in an annual Data Infrastructure Forum that will be organised and hosted by the DIF. Consequently, the DIF will serve as a vehicle to match the growing demand for investment in African data infrastructure markets with increased investments from European financiers in a green and secure manner in line with the Global Gateway Strategy, ultimately contributing to the development-oriented and human-centric data economy and society in Africa.