Regionally Oriented National School of Cybersecurity – RONSC (École nationale de cybersécurité à vocation régionale, ENCVR)

Summary

Inaugurated in Dakar in 2018, the Regional Oriented National Cybersecurity School (RONCS) is the result of a strong partnership between France and Senegal, serving as a regional hub for expertise and offering high-level training in cybersecurity. This school aims at empowering African states in the field of cybersecurity, thus responding to a growing need in this region of the world.

Details

Aim

The school aims at supporting African States in building their cybersecurity capacities. The ultimate goal is to provide these States with the necessary means to face the challenges of cyberspace in an autonomous way. As such, the school takes on a major role in raising awareness among policy makers. It trains cybersecurity experts, creates a center of best practices in Africa, and ultimately strengthens cooperation with and within the African continent on cybersecurity and defense issues.

Therefore, the RONCS is not intended to provide assistance to African states, but rather to serve as a regional hub for expertise on cybersecurity. It is temporarily based in Senegal’s National School of Public Administration, but seeks to enhance regional cooperation between African countries, for example by harmonizing expertise and practices. This project aims at fostering pedagogical innovation and ensuring quality training.

Lastly, this school is part of Senegal’s national cybersecurity strategy (SNC2022), particularly in its training, education and skills development objectives, as well as the dissemination of a security culture in this area.

Context

The World Bank forecasts that Sub-Saharan Africa, due to its young population, its human and natural resources, has potential to yield inclusive growth and wipe out poverty in the region. With the world’s largest free trade area and a 1.2 billion-person market, the continent is creating ‘an entirely new development path, harnessing the potential of its resources and people’. Part of this growth is in Africa’s dynamic digital economy.

These positive trends, however, are undermined by two major challenges: the evolving threat landscape and inadequate levels of cybersecurity across the continent.

To take up this challenge, France partnered with Senegal to establish a Regional Oriented National Cybersecurity School (RONCS) in Dakar (École nationale de cybersécurité à vocation régionale, ENCVR).

Outputs

The Regionally Oriented National Cybersecurity School in Dakar became fully operational in 2021, providing 29 international training courses and 16 national training courses, which nearly 400 auditors benefited from throughout the year. These short and practical training programs, ranging from a few days to a few weeks in length, focus on four main areas, namely computer security, the fight against cybercrime, digital intelligence and the governance of computer security. These training courses are intended for a wide range of professionals, such as senior officials and decision-makers, information and communication technology security managers, police officers, military personnel, as well as judges in charge of the fight against cybercrime. The RONCS benefits from a fully equipped technical platform inaugurated in November 2020 and composed of a cyber training center, a simulation room, a school lab, an engineering documentation center as well as a regional space. As it is attached to the General Secretariat of the Presidency, the RONCS offers national trainings which are entirely supported and whose general logistics are ensured. International training courses are carried out within the “African Institute on Cybersecurity (Institut Africain de Cybersécurité)”, an institute introduced by France within the structure of RONCS, where two French experts works with their Senegalese counterparts.

This project therefore highlights a unique partnership between France and Senegal in a very innovative area, and is currently the object of a growing interest among international actors such as the European Union and the UN Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC).

Websites

• Main website link: in development as of June 2022
• Video in French:  https://youtu.be/COOA20Y1VEY