Enhancing cyber diplomacy capabilities and coordination in the ECOWAS region

Summary

The EU ISS and GFCE workshop offers ECOWAS countries the support to identifying CCB needs, sharing knowledge and best practices, and setting CCB priorities as they pertain to developing national and regional cyber diplomacy capacities.

Details

Aim

Through participation in the workshop, co-organized by EU ISS and the GFCE, ECOWAS countries are further engaged in identifying CCB needs, sharing knowledge and best practices, and setting CCB priorities as they pertain to developing national and regional cyber diplomacy capacities. In addition, the workshop presents the participants with an opportunity to discuss how EU-level best practices can be adapted to ECOWAS contexts. Finally, the project seeks to identify best practices, recommendations and needs that can be fed into an the update of the three-year Joint Action Plan with ECOWAS launched under Germany’s G7 Presidency.

Context

In light of the global challenges associated with malicious cyber activities and aware of the difficulties to quantify these challenges in low- and middle-income countries, the German Government in cooperation with ECOWAS has established a “A joint platform for Advancing Cyber Security with ECOWAS” during its G7 Presidency in 2022 and launched a three-year Action Plan on Advancing Cybersecurity. The project helped implement measures of the Action Plan under the “Cyberdiplomacy” track.

Activities

• Organization of one in-country workshop in Belgium (Brussels) with EU ISS and ECOWAS for the benefit of diplomats and policy makers from the ECOWAS region.
• Analysis of conclusions from the activity and their inclusion in the Joint Action Plan.