Policy Brief No. 232 — March 2026
Tech Diplomacy and Avenues for Digital Development in Africa Folashadé Soulé
Key Points → Tech diplomacy in Africa is gaining traction as a vital tool for advancing foreign policy goals, fostering regional integration, promoting economic development and attracting investments. It involves leveraging digital technologies and platforms to enhance communication, engage citizens and shape narratives on the global stage. → Although challenges persist, African nations are actively exploring opportunities to build sovereign digital capabilities and participate in shaping global digital governance. → Tech diplomacy will be critical to how Africa engages with itself as new and emerging technologies increasingly demand collaboration, whether in cross-border data flows, shared compute infrastructure, talent development and mobility, or digital public goods, including fair taxation regimes that make African countries more competitive globally than with one another. → A stronger and more cohesive continental approach to tech diplomacy will ultimately enable the continent to build resilience and engage with other regions from a position of strength.
Introduction Digital technologies have become increasingly central to economic development, societal wellbeing and national security.1 This is evident at the international level as the ongoing geopolitical tussle over the rules, standards and values that will govern our digital world continues. Undeniably, control over technology can translate to geopolitical influence. Therefore, issues related to the digital economy, such as internet connectivity, data governance, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence (AI), are moving from being niche topics to gaining mainstream status in foreign policy. Digital diplomacy — defined as the use of digital tools for public diplomacy (Rashica 2018) — is making way for tech diplomacy, a more strategic endeavour to shape the governance of emerging technologies, influence global standards, and engage directly with powerful tech companies that build and control digital infrastructure and services. This can take the form of the appointment of career diplomats as envoys or ambassadors-at-large dedicated explicitly to digital foreign policy.
1
See www.un.org/en/un75/impact-digital-technologies.