More than ones and zeros: How the EU can partner with Africa on digital literacy

Geopolitical competition over digital connectivity has been heating up for a while now. African countries have been at the center of bold promises (though not always matched by bold results) by China, the EU and the US with their respective global infrastructure initiatives, from Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to the Global Gateway strategy and the US-led G7 initiative Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment. But cables, satellites and data centres alone won’t close the digital divide if populations don’t have the skills and overall literacy they need to succeed in the digital economy and keep pace with the digital transition overall.

African governments and regional organisations are well aware of this and are currently drafting national, regional and continental digital literacy frameworks. They face complex decisions over which competencies to prioritise: Some governments prioritise technical skills for entrepreneurship and employment, from operating devices to creating content. Others put their ambition into training national ICT elites who can innovate and compete in the global economy.

At the same time, there is a growing recognition that digital literacy has to go beyond technical skills to achieve the goal of resilient societies in which citizens are informed about their digital rights, know how to evaluate online information and use digital technologies for social and political participation.

African priorities: Employment and competitiveness

Given Africa’s development needs, African governments typically view digital skills primarily as pathways to employment. This applies to all three countries that serve as case studies in a new ECDPM report on digital literacy: South Africa, Rwanda and Senegal. South Africa in particular, , where the struggle against rampant youth unemployment dominates all policy areas, focuses on employability. Rwanda – a less developed country determined to become a leader in the digital realm – places a comparatively strong focus on advanced academic programmes to train a highly qualified national and international ICT elite. At the same time, it uses its centralised structure to teach the general population, including illiterate citizens, how to use government portals and mobile devices. Senegal also aims to create job opportunities through digital upskilling and would be in a good position to benefit from its vibrant civil society to narrow the digital divide in the population, but it suffers from poor implementation at the state level.

International cooperation partners have responded to the employment focus by treating digital skills as an extension of vocational training offers. Some EU countries, among them Germany, enjoy a lot of credibility in the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) sector, followed by China, whose TVET colleges are also extending global offers under the BRI. US private sector companies such as Cisco are leading providers of high-level ICT skills, but they face competition from Chinese companies (mostly Huawei) as well as from non-profit actors such as ICDL, the international arm of the European Computer Drivers License (ECDL). UN organisations are also active in these areas, with UNEVOC focusing on digital skills in TVET and the ITU offering high-level ICT skills.

A digitally skilled workforce and ICT engineers are only one part of the puzzle. In an environment of low levels of overall literacy and persisting gender divides, as well as weak cyberdefense capacities and regulatory systems, African populations are disproportionately vulnerable to harms such as online disinformation, cybercrime, data breaches and digital surveillance driven by commercial and state interests. 

In response, the international actors mentioned above offer programmes for educating the broader population, often focusing on empowering women. These offers are more likely to encompass elements beyond technical skills, but their reach tends to remain more limited due to fragmented approaches by local actors and international cooperation agencies. Private sector offers – from Huawei to Microsoft – tend to fall into the category of corporate social responsibility, which makes their real impact – beyond their marketing – difficult to measure independently.

Frameworks: EU DigComp as gold standard

As they are drafting their own strategies and frameworks for digital literacy, African countries and regional organisations have many international examples to choose from. But – as seen in the pan-African Digital Literacy for Citizens Framework by the Smart Africa Digital Academy – the search for models usually leads to a version of the European Digital Competence Framework (DigComp). DigComp defines digital literacy in five broad areas with 21 competencies, ranging from generating content to media literacy. EU DigComp is viewed as the global gold standard by international education experts and UNESCO and the World Bank have adopted it. Smart Africa’s framework borrows from UNESCO, which added a more basic category (operation of devices) to serve the needs of developing countries with lower levels of (digital) literacy.

With its goal to enable “the confident, critical and responsible use of, and engagement with, digital technologies for learning, at work, and for participation in society”, DigComp pursues a holistic approach that values technical skills alongside ‘soft skills’ that allow citizens to navigate the internet and digital technologies in a safe way and that empowers citizens, civil society, and communities to confidently participate in the global network society (‘digital citizenship’). Actors like China cannot make such a comprehensive offer. China’s strategic policy documents on digital literacy mention digital rights only in the context of guidance by the communist party. China’s domestic framework for teachers does not refer to the above-mentioned critical skills.

The US – with neither a federal digital literacy framework nor comprehensive digital rights legislation in place – also lacks the EU’s credibility in this field, but the Biden administration is willing to support the European approach. A Digital Literacy Primer published by USAID uses EU DigComp as a guide for the agency’s programming, breaking down the need to mainstream digital literacy (in combination with a gender-sensitive approach) by identifying risks of digital illiteracy (such as hate speech, disinformation, cybercrime). The handbook also includes detailed recommendations for adapting approaches to more or less mature digital ecosystems, as well as to the intervention area, from agriculture to financial literature and conflict prevention.

Mainstreaming digital literacy in holistic offers

Translating concepts to local realities will be key for the EU to turn its approach to digital literacy into a trusted element of EU digital cooperation in Africa. The EU needs to articulate to partner countries why a comprehensive approach to digital literacy should be an important part of any offer for upskilling the population in the digital age.

Team Europe initiatives, in which the EU and member states collaborate under the Global Gateway strategy, would benefit from solutions that integrate hard infrastructure and technical skills with digital literacy by default as the EU added value. This package approach to the ‘human-centric digital transformation’ that the EU promotes may win over private sector and civil society partners as well as financing partners from the World Bank to the US. Most of all, it would be attractive to partner countries who are looking for more than ones and zeros when building up their digital economies and societies.

The views are those of the author and not necessarily those of ECDPM.