The project carried out activities in five African countries: Mozambique, Burkina Faso, Tunisia, Morocco and Uganda.
The first step was to identify relevant stakeholders. The project established a comprehensive database with 1128 relevant stakeholders in Africa and Europe.
Second, workshops were organised for civil society and academia actors to identify bottlenecks and challenges to digital transformation. 11 workshops were organised with 197 participants.
Then, participants were followed up with tailored capacity building activities to discuss the topics further and to prepare them for their participation at the Innovation Days. In total, 246 participants took part in capacity building activities. In Uganda, a training of trainers was organised as well, so that trainers can continue to train further CSOs in future. In addition, a toolkit was developed and published in 3 languages, tailor made for CSOs on how to harness digital tools to improve their operations, visibility and efficiency.
The next step was to organise the multi-stakeholder Innovation Days. With a duration of 2-3 days, participants from the entire digital ecosystem came together. An Innovation Day typically had on average 65 participants. In total 355 participants took part in the Innovation Days in four countries. Over the Innovation Days, participants worked in teams using a design thinking methodology in a sort of idea-hackathon, and came up with innovative solutions to the challenges identified. In total, 47 solutions were developed, out of which 14 were selected as winners.
The project developed numerous valuable assets, this is just a selection of the most important:
- Stakeholder database: this will be transferred to the Global D4D Hub Secretariat
- Country specific whatsapp communities were established and participants were active sharing local resources
- A thorough overview of the challenges and topics identified by civil society and academia is available in a project deliverable, which will be published on d4daccess.eu the resource platform of the D4D Hub
- The methodology of the project and in particular the Innovation Days will also be available on d4daccess.eu and can be used by other agencies working with civil society, academia and the digital ecosystems
- 47 solutions were co-created by the teams during the Innovation Days and provide innovative solutions that can be picked up by interested partners. They are available upon request
- A toolkit was developed for CSOs and will be available on d4daccess.eu in French, Portuguese and English
The project disseminated its results and experiences at three external events:
- Session at Transform Africa Summit on 28th of April 2023 on the topic: Strenthening CSOs role and contribution in the design and implementation of digital policies"
- Online Experience Sharing session on 26th of September, sharing lessons, available assets and methodologies with other ICT58 projects and interesting agencies
- Session at Forum of Internet Freedom in Africa (FIFA) on 29th of September titled: Local actors, global fora. Strengthening African priorities and participation in international cybersecurity and digital policy processes
