Luxembourg — 22nd September

As the iPRIS peer-to-peer training advances in Luxembourg, Week 2 focus shifted to the social, institutional, and protective aspects of digital regulation. Inclusion, accountability, cybersecurity, and consumer rights are explored during these sessions as founding principles of trustworthy digital ecosystems. The second Francophone cohort to participate in the iPRIS delved into these topics and more.

Read Week 1 highlights here

According to the GSMA Mobile Gender Gap Report 2025, in 2024, Sub-Saharan Africa was the only region to make headway in narrowing the mobile internet gender gap. The divide fell from 36% in 2022 to 32% in 2023, and further to 29% in 2024. 

Yet, the challenge remains immense: about 205 million women in the region are still offline, representing 61% of the adult female population. These figures show a step in the right direction, but also highlight the need for appropriate regulation to bridge the digital divide, especially for women in Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Tackling core challenges of trustworthy regulation

Various issues came up during the knowledge-exchange sessions in Luxembourg, currently shaping how regulators can foster trust and accountability in an ever-evolving digital environment:

  1. Inclusion has to go beyond access

Connectivity on its own does not guarantee equity. Unless purposely managed by regulators from a digital rights angle, such technologies reproduce gender, rural, and affordability barriers.

  1. Accountability Builds Trust

Monitoring and evaluation are not just about reports and checklists, but rather about ensuring that Change Initiatives trigger real-life change. When regulators monitor, adapt, and share lessons learned from them in the open, trust is created.

  1. Cybersecurity as a Public Good

In an era marked by extreme digital connectivity, cybersecurity has become of utmost importance. According to UNDP, the second quarter of 2023 in Africa had the highest average weekly cyberattacks against any one organisation, approximating 2164 attacks. All individuals, including small businesses and large enterprises, are vulnerable to cyberattacks. Therefore, with ransomware, phishing, and fraud crossing borders, networks must be guarded to shield economies and societies.

  1. Scarce resources must be safeguarded

Numbering and addressing are the invisible framework of communications, and consumer protection builds trust for digital services. Regulators must act with transparency, vigilance, and fairness in their dealings with these matters.

  1. Change Initiatives: From vision into action

Institutional leadership and structured project management are key to transforming insights into lasting reforms. Success lies in moving from strategy to implementation.

Reflections from the telecom experts during week 2

Embedding inclusion in regulation

Opening the week, Sadibou Sakho from SPIDER conducted a session on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Connectivity, he reminded the participants, does not guarantee equity. Hence, he insisted that meaningful connectivity might become an empty phrase by emphasising that it needs to be reliable, affordable, and relevant. 

The country reflections demonstrated the need to tackle affordability, urban planning, and gender disparities so that digital transformation can serve all citizens.

Measuring impact

Katja Sarajeva from SPIDER walked participants through monitoring, evaluation, accountability, and learning (MEAL), asserting that regulation is deemed successful only if its impact outweighs the mere existence of documents.

 

She put equal importance on practical tools, stakeholder profiling, and continuous evolution in capturing lessons taught. She added that even small but practical outputs can contribute immensely to transformative long-term changes if aligned with an institution's priorities.

Cybersecurity and resilience

Asmaa Ouraini from  Institut Luxembourgeois de Régulation (ILR) facilitated an extensive discussion on cybersecurity and network resilience, delving into how tiny cracks over time can turn into a roaring national crisis.

She stressed that the prime liability is often human error, hence awareness and digital hygiene should be positioned on par with technical defences. Pulling on the European NIS2 directive, Asmaa showed the merits of resilience through risk-based approaches and provided some examples as to how African regulators may tailor such frameworks within their own contexts.

Numbering, addressing and consumer protection

Numbering and addressing sessions were steered by ILR's Tom Meyers and the Belgian Institute for Postal Services and Telecommunications (IBPT)'s Richard Klein. 

They discussed how the allocation and portability of numbers affect interoperability and user choice and cited Belgium's blocking of fraudulent SMS messages as an example of consumer protection in practice.

Later in the week, Sophie Steichen and Stefania Salvati of ILR presented approaches to consumer protection, emphasising that trust in digital services depends on strong safeguards, from transparent operator obligations to active measures against fraud. 

Project management and change initiatives

Malena Liedholm Ndounou of SPIDER returned to take the participants through the chapter on project management while reinforcing the idea of how SMART objectives and indicators are the two sides which turn the Change Initiative into concrete reform. The week closed with participant and ILR expert exchanges where national priorities were balanced against international best practices to ensure that each Change Initiative is context- and action-specific.

Learning Beyond the Classroom

That week also extended itself beyond the freshly set training room. At SES, one of the world's leading satellite operators, the whole delegation received explanations on space-based connectivity for resilience and how it can be extended to underserved areas.

Cultural visits, including ones to museums and heritage sites, provided possibilities for exchange and reflection. These experiences made it clear that peer-to-peer learning is not just technical but also relational and cultural, thereby bridging the Atlantic between African and European regulators, beyond the formal bounds of this program.

More reflections from the week

Watch the highlights from Week 2 below and stay tuned for more updates on the remaining week of the peer-to-peer training sessions.

 

iPRIS is coordinated and implemented by SPIDER in strategic and technical partnership with the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS) and Institut luxembourgeois de régulation (ILR), as well as ARTAC, CRASA, EACO, and WATRA.

iPRIS is funded by the European Union, Sweden, and Luxembourg as part of the Team Europe Initiative “D4D for Digital Economy and Society in Sub-Saharan Africa” (Code: 001).