D4D Hub | BMZ Digital.Global

At a Glance

Across the globe, digital technologies are transforming economies and societies at an unprecedented pace. The promises and perils of the digital transformation range widely. We strive to shape digital economies that put people at their heart, protect citizens’ fundamental rights and provide equal chances to everyone.

In December 2020, the EU launched the Digital for Development (D4D) Hub, inaugurating a new era for the global digital cooperation. EU Member States including Germany, France, Belgium, Estonia and Luxembourg are at the forefront of promoting new international partnerships on digital transformation as Team Europe. They identified a clear need for aligning their digital initiatives for increased impact. The D4D Hub is the key tool to have a Team Europe in action with unprecedented levels of coordination, advancing multi-stakeholder dialogue to leverage expertise and resources and share best practices.

The digital future will link people and businesses across the globe closer together. In an interconnected world, the EU starts its digital cooperation with Africa. As the D4D Hub’s first operational regional component, the “AU-EU D4D Hub” advances new digital partnerships and investments for a fair and inclusive African digital economy.

Launch Event

The Goals

The establishment of the D4D Hub as a multi-stakeholder platform marks a turning point for supporting a human-centric digital transformation in partner countries. The D4D Hub bundles the multitude of digital initiatives by European actors into one strategic and coordinated approach. This will enable the EU to strengthen its global position to promote its values, standards and strategic interests for a fair and inclusive digital future.

The D4D Hub operationalizes the Team Europe approach by uniting key stakeholders from European Member States, tech companies, civil society and financial institutions. In the D4D Hub’s different regional branches (Africa, Asia, Latin America,Caribbean, as well as in the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood), the platform will include all relevant stakeholders from respective regions. This will allow for unprecedented levels of coordination and continued multi-stakeholder dialogue, scaling of investments and impact.

The D4D Hub was jointly designed and developed with EU Member States and European development agencies (GIZ, Enabel, LuxDev, AFD/Expertise France, MFA Estonia). Eleven EU Member States have signed a Letter of Intent to cooperate under the D4D Hub (DE, BE, FR, EE, LU, ES, PT, SE, NL, LT, FI). European tech companies through the D4D Coalition (e.g. SAP, Orange, Nokia, Ericsson, Vodafone, and more) have also been actively consulted.

Operating Principles

The D4D Hub is guided by five operating principles:

D4D in Action

As the first operational regional component, the D4D Hub will kick-off activities in Africa from January 2021 onwards.

The AU-EU D4D Hub will serve as a key strategic tool to advance multi-stakeholder dialogue, joint partnerships and investments in the African digital economy.

The AU-EU D4D Hub’s activities are demand-driven and specifically targeted to contribute to bridging the digital divide and to leveraging digital innovations for an inclusive and sustainable development:

Demand-driven technical support and capacity building will be provided to national stakeholders in order to help identify/prioritise within an inclusive national digital transformation plans and support the implementation of priority actions.

Knowledge sharing to disseminate lessons learned and built on best practices.

Facilitating inter-African and African-EU multi-stakeholder partnerships through the support of structured digital policy dialogues between key stakeholders of digital ecosystems to increase investments in the African digital economy.
To strengthen digital innovation networks in Africa and promote intercontinental dialogue between African and European innovators and policymakers, the AEDIB will create important opportunities for employment and pave the way for economic growth and recovery.

Initiated by EU Member States (France, Belgium, and Germany) and the European Commission, the AEDIB will establish a Pan-African network of Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs). This network will encourage joint ventures between Africa and Europe and provide technical innovation expertise and experimentation for small and mid-size enterprises and start-ups.

The AEDIB will connect information and communications technology professionals, investors, academia, incubators, and national, regional and local authorities. By facilitating access to financing for African DIHs and mutual learning and joint solution development, the AEDIB will help solve technological and entrepreneurial challenges. A special focus on reaching and including youth and women will be incorporated through the Digital and Entrepreneurial Skills Academy.

The partners in the AEDIB cover more than 80 countries, of which over 30 have already established DIHs (ca. 300 European DIHs to date), with the vision to ultimately establish DIHs in every country, facilitating the creation of a single market for digital innovation in Africa and Europe.
Europe and Africa seek to converge their visions of a fair and sovereign data economy based on shared values and policies that assure strong data protection and inclusive economic growth.

The EU, in close partnership with AU Member States, the Smart Africa Alliance, tech companies, financing institutions, civil society organizations, and academia, will ensure that data generated within Africa benefits its citizens, businesses, and public sector.

This partnership will facilitate investments in African data infrastructure and data technologies and services that can contribute to the acceleration of the digital transformation of the continent.

The EU-AU Data Flagship will also create a more enabling data economy in Africa through increasing the number of highly qualified data professionals, with a focus on issues related to data protection, collection, storage, analysis, interpretation, and visualisation of data.

In the fight against global health crises, such as COVID-19, this flagship will support African governments to better collect and use data, while fully respecting the rights to privacy and data protection.