DCO, Smart Africa sign MoU to enhance the growth of digital economy in Africa
The Digital Cooperation Organization (DCO) and the Smart Africa Alliance (SA) have joined forces to promote common interests towards digital transformation in Africa. The partners will engage in joined activities such as enhancing cross-border data flows, focusing on digital empowerment of women, youth and entrepreneurs and supporting the creation of a favourable business environment for innovation-drive enterprises (IDEs) to grow and thrive. Exchanging knowledge in governance, strategy development, initiatives funding will also form part of the common agenda.
Deemah Alyahya, the Secretary General of DCO, said: “The DCO firmly believes in the power of collaboration with like-minded organizations to enable digital prosperity for all, and I look forward to working with SmartAfrica and the 30 nations it represents to support the organization’s important work in ushering Africa into a knowledge economy”
Lacina Koné, DG/CEO of Smart Africa, stated: “We are very pleased to combine our efforts with the DCO, a like-minded organization and find avenues where we can collaborate on our common objective to enhance the growth of our digital economies. This MoU will contribute to reinforce the achievement of our vision to create a single digital market in Africa by 2030.”
The DCO is a global multilateral organization founded in November 2020 that aims to enable digital prosperity for all by accelerating the inclusive growth of the digital economy. The DCO brings together the Ministries of Digital Economy and ICT of ten nations – Bahrain, Djibouti Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Rwanda and Saudi Arabia – that collectively represent nearly US$2 trillion in GDP and a market of over 600 million people, more than 70% of whom are under the age of 35.
The DCO is focused on empowering youth, women and entrepreneurs, leveraging the accelerative power of the digital economy, and harnessing innovation to drive economic growth and increase social prosperity. Through collaboration, dialogue and the creation of mutually advantageous cross-border legislation, we seek to establish within our member nations the optimal infrastructure and policies for the rapid creation of inclusive and equitable digital economies within which all people, businesses and societies can innovate and thrive.
In pursuit of our member states’ common interests in digital skills training, data protection, intellectual copyright, regulation, taxation, cross-border data flows, entrepreneurship and related areas, the DCO works collaboratively with policymakers, the private sector, international organizations, NGOs and civil society to enable more inclusive digital transformation and the growth of digital industries.
