The Validation Workshop for the National Digital ID and Digital Transformation Strategy 2023 to 2028 was held in the Gambia on the 16th and 17th of May 2024 at the Sunset Beach Hotel, in Kotu, Kanifing Municipal Council of the Gambia.
The need for Digital Transformation was initiated by the government of the Gambia in late December 2022, through the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy and commenced with technical and financial support from UNECA after initial discussions started at the sidelines of the 17th Internet Governance Forum held in Addis Ababa. The consultative visit and stakeholder engagement started in the Gambia in January 2023. This was followed by an 8-month process of engagement and strategy development led by the UNECA consultant team prior to the validation workshop in May 2024 in the Gambia.
The consultative process and technical discussions with Gambian stakeholders between The Gambia UNECA consultant team involved all Governmental Ministries in the Gambia including the Immigration Department and The Gambian Police Force.
UNECA had three consultants involved in the overall process leading to the validation workshop. The entire consultative process leading to the validation was led on UNECA’s part by Dr Mactar Seck, Chief of Section – Innovation and Technology, UNECA, and on the Gambian side by The Director of E-government at the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy, Mr Lang Loum.
The validation workshop was opened by the Honourable Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Honourable Ousman Bah, who has taken the role of champion of digitalization process of the Gambia. The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy, Mr Lamin Camara gave an overview of government support for this initiative and while Dr. Seck provided the structured outline of the validation workshop and how the process started.
The two-day validation workshop focused on comprehensive presentation of Digital ID and Digital Transformation strategies led by the UNECA consultant team (Poncelet Ileleji, Dr. Bharat Nanawati, and Prof. Thomas Senaji) and facilitated by Dr Mactar Seck. All presentations took into the account, International best practices, the Gambian current context and policies, methodology used with various statistical data, and qualitative and quantitative tools used.
Comments and inputs from all governmental stakeholders which comprised mainly Information Communication Technology technocrats from all the various government ministries in the Gambia including the Gambia government’s newly established dedicated Information Communication Technology Agency (GICTA) where received deliberated on and accepted through a consensus approach.
The last aspects of the two-day validation workshop involved two sets of group discussions to input and validate the actionized implementation plan for both the Digital ID and Digital Transformation strategy. Group rapporteurs presented each group’s outputs which the UNECA Consultants captured to be reflected in the final strategies to be submitted to the government of the Gambia by UNECA through the Honourable Minister of Communications and Digital Economy.
Dr. Seck, on behalf of UNECA, thanked all governmental stakeholders for attendance and commitment throughout the two-day validation workshop. He assured the government of the Gambia of UNECA’s commitment to see the successful implementation phase of the validated strategies. The Permanent Secretary, Mr Lamin Camara, of the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy of the Gambia closed the Validation workshop after a very successful two days of engagement.