AFRICA: Regional Digital Infrastructure Market Development

In the context of the fourth industrial revolution, ECOWAS and its member countries are looking to develop their digital economies and leverage the digital sector to boost economic growth and further regional integration efforts to build a robust regional digital economy. However, some countries do not have the size and resources to succeed alone and need the economies of scale and networks effects offered by a larger regional market. Besides, developing a digital economy in West Africa requires cross-boundary support mechanisms for building national and sub-regional digital economies in a coordinated manner to fill critical infrastructure, technology, legal and policy gaps.

PPIAF, alongside the World Bank Digital Development Global Practice, of the World Bank responded to ECOWAS's request to help prepare regional and country-level reform roadmaps to remove cross-border barriers that are preventing the development of a single connectivity market. The PPIAF activity prepared policy and regulatory reform roadmaps to foster an effective single connectivity market in West Africa, based on an assessment of key bottlenecks at the national – in Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, and Sierra Leone – as well as at the regional levels within the context of ECOWAS. The report sets out several recommendations, proposed reforms, and specific long-term strategies to address the bottlenecks identified for each of the six countries under study, as well as for the ECOWAS Commission. For example, at the regional level, the study recommended: 

• Adoption of guidelines on the application of regional competition law to the electronic communications sector (when there is a regional dimension) by ECOWAS Regional Competition Authority; 
• Ensuring that a regional body is in charge of gathering information on projects in relation to national and regional infrastructures (including alternative infrastructures) and disseminating them to key focal points (both public and private stakeholders);
• Creation of a specific committee in charge of monitoring each country's progress in the implementation and compliance of the regional legal and regulatory provisions by member States and also reporting publicly the outcome of such monitoring on a regular basis.

The report will serve as a baseline study to identify locations and status of digital infrastructure and cross-border links in the select countries with a set of recommended measures from the policy/regulatory perspectives in the areas of connectivity and digital infrastructure, data protection, and online regulation. 

Series of dissemination workshops were organized to discuss the findings, and as an outcome of this technical assistance, ECOWAS and countries are willing to adopt, adapt and implement their legal frameworks in relation to digital activities and welcome any support to further this end. Work on harmonizing the regional legal framework (ECOWAS / UEMOA) applicable to electronic communications is underway.