Johannesburg, 02 Jun 2022
The hierarchical and bureaucratic nature of government means that official response to anything is slow – and this is arguably the biggest threat to Africa’s digital progress and manifold related benefits.
At the ITWeb Security Summit 2022 in Johannesburg this week, independent consultant Karen Allen, CEO of Karen Allen International, underlined that in the same way legislation and regulation is used to govern international relations between states, cyber diplomacy is used to govern interaction in the digital world or cyber ecosystem.
Allen is an independent consultant currently working on emerging threats and digital diplomacy at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Pretoria. Allen’s focus at ISS is researching the unintended consequences of emerging technology on human security in Africa - ranging from cyber threats to information operations, IOT and combat innovation.
She also contributes to a number of other think tanks and publications including the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies and NATO’s Defence Strategic Communications.
In her presentation at this year’s Security Summit, Allen described cyber diplomacy as ‘the rules of the road’ for operators in this ecosystem.
She warned that if Africa wants to have its say and have its voice heard within cyber diplomatic circles, governments and industry stakeholders must act more promptly.
“The bottom line is that Africa can’t afford to wait until its capacity shortfalls are dealt with to then start thinking about cyber diplomacy … it needs to engage in cyber diplomacy at the same time so that it has a stake in developing how its future technologies emerge.Headlines about presidents being hacked or another government department being targeted are not going to go away, so the focus has to be on cyber diplomacy.”
Another reason for the continent to pay more attention to cyber diplomacy is because of the influence this has on digital development.
Allen said that Africa will need to lean on ICT and telecommunications to develop its digital capacity, ands which – for Africa at least – cannot be just rhetoric, it has to materialise into action and the strategic application of technology know-how, people and processes to advance economies.
Regional organisations like SADC, ECOWAS and the AU need to leverage networks to build their digital capacity, said Allen. “Interpol estimates that there are some five hundred billion active African users online. It represents 38% of the volume of users relative to the continent’s population, and technological adoption rates will be a key indicator of a state’s economic development path.”
“Increasingly we’re hearing this phrase ‘digital deprivation’ to describe those who have not been a part of the digital revolution,” she said, and added that to address this issue, the continent has to combine the requisite skills, with people and technological know-how to harness benefits of sustainability and build resistance.
Cyber space shaping a new world order
Data is considered the lifeblood of cyber space and cyber diplomacy the foundation of a new digital world order. But this world order comes with both opportunities and threats, Allen suggested.
She said, “We need rules of the road… this concept of state sovereignty and data sovereignty being challenged by some states also becomes particularly tricky where there are issues of attribution and violations of international humanitarian law.
Cyber diplomacy seeks to influence the direction of technological innovation, application and governance.
“I know talking about cyber diplomacy to people who are developing cyber products smacks of regulation … but I think the thrust of this is that governments need to understand the threat, and they need to talk to each other in a more proactive manner.”
Cyber space presents opportunities and opportunities particularly for Africa to be able to lead top development and overcome geographical and other constraints, said Allen.
“It transcends borders, which normally govern state-to-state engagements in international relations, and it’s also leaderless. So when you’re having diplomatic discussions, you’re actually talking to a country in that cyber space. So nation states are having to navigate policy at international level to regulate this.”
Some countries, like Denmark and the Netherlands, have developed cyber ambassadors to lead the charge on this, and South Africa has had cyber envoys which has represented the country’s interest at high level multilateral meetings.
Part of the role of these digital ambassadors is to help governments select the most effective course of action in managing dual use technologies, such as drones, surveillance applications, and facial recognition systems, as well as technologies developed and emanating from the private sector.
Allen referred to the development and use of GPS systems that was initially designed for use in the military and was later commercialised for public use.
“Of course many of the technologies are dual use, that’s why I am talking about opportunities and threats… but in order to be able to harness the opportunities, you need to understand the threats,” said Allen.
This has forced states to come to terms with the fact that they do not have monopoly of control over these innovations.
Said Allen, “All this forces nation states to think about their fundamental, ideological decisions on freedoms and controls … again, that is why I am talking about cyber space as an ecosystem. They have to consider whether they support cyber diplomacy democratically, with an open and free internet, or whether they believe it represents an extension of the state and therefore needs to be controlled.”
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