Global Gateway and the EU’s Digital Ambitions

By Marta Granados Hernandez

In recent years, the European Union has signaled its ambition to become a bigger player in the global digital transformation, and it has put Africa at the center of these efforts. One of the key outcomes of the sixth EU – African Union summit, which took place in February 2022, was the EU’s pledge of an ambitious Africa-Europe Investment Package worth €150 billion ($170 billion) to support the continent’s energy, transport, health, education, and digital sectors. The assistance will go towards a broad range of infrastructure projects as part of the Global Gateway initiative, a global infrastructure plan under which the EU plans to mobilize up to €300 billion ($340 billion) in investments by 2027. The investment package promises to promote projects that can be delivered with high standards, transparency, and accountability.

With Global Gateway, the EU aims to build on the current momentum in the African Union’s agenda for green and digital transitions and to align them with its domestic policies, including the EU Digital Compass and the EU Green Deal. The emphasis on overseas values-based infrastructure investment in green and digital areas is in line with the G7’s Build Back Better World (B3W) initiative, which signals transatlantic convergence on the need to more proactively promote values-driven economic and governance standards amid China’s efforts to shape global norms through the Belt and Road Initiative.

The EU’s focus on Africa’s digital transformation comes as the bloc struggles to advance its domestic vision for the digital economy amid the dominance of the U.S. market-driven model and the Chinese state-led model. Concerned about the influence and market dominance of these two competing visions over digital norms and standards in areas such as data protection and data governance, the EU Commission under president Von der Leyen has become more vocal about the need to become a bigger player in the global digital transformation. In this context, the idea of the EU’s Digital Sovereignty has emerged as a means of enhancing the bloc’s ability to act as an independent actor in the digital field. This notion has been translated into the 2030 Digital Compass, launched in 2021, in which the EU outlines its digital vision with a “human-centric” approach to the digital economy, emphasizing individual rights and democratic values, such as freedom of expression and user data protection.

The EU’s strategy to advance a human-centric digital policy as the new norm in cyberspace has been centered around efforts to develop regulations in areas such as data governance and emerging digital technologies. This follows the “Brussels effect”, or the idea that because of its market size, the EU can promulgate regulations that multinational companies will incorporate as global standards, thereby exporting its influence and values to the rest of the world. One example is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the EU’s data protection law, which has become an international reference for digital governance worldwide and has been widely emulated in foreign jurisdictions like India and Brazil.

Emboldened by the success of the GDPR, the EU Commission has stepped up its regulatory campaign in cyberspace, from measures targeted at reducing the market share of large digital platforms like the Digital Markets Act (DMA) to initiatives aimed at ensuring the protection of individual rights such as the AI Act. However, beyond the EU’s single market, these regulations have failed to project the EU’s values-driven digital ambitions in foreign markets. There, the U.S.’s Google or China’s Huawei drive the digital transformation by building digital infrastructure, shaping regulatory frameworks, and leading discussions around international technical standards.

With competitors shaping global digital norms by setting de facto standards on the ground through technology exports and harmonization agreements, the Brussels effect has become a less effective strategy. In Africa, the market dominance of Chinese tech companies like Huawei and ZTE in the telecommunications sector – from the construction of digital infrastructure such as data centers to the export of technologies like 5G – has led to the widespread adoption of Chinese technology standards. To clear the path for the adoption of these standards, Chinese technology exports are often complemented by bilateral agreements on technical standards harmonization. As of 2019, China had officially signed 85 standardization cooperation agreements with 49 countries and regions as part of the Digital Silk Road.

The dissemination of Chinese technology standards has the potential to draw African countries into principles that are based on state control of the internet and the use of digital technologies for surveillance purposes. From the EU’s perspective, China’s digital governance principles go against its human-centric digital principles aimed at protecting fundamental rights and ensuring citizen control over data. The proliferation of Huawei’s “Safe City” agreements, consisting of packages of bundled technologies including AI-driven facial recognition cameras and social media monitoring tools, has raised concern in Europe that Chinese technology exports will be used by illiberal governments to undermine human rights.

Beyond their role as technology providers, Chinese companies are increasingly assisting African countries, such as Côte d’Ivoire, in the design of digital regulatory frameworks, creating an enabling environment for the emulation of China’s digital governance model. In Senegal, Huawei provided technical assistance and equipment for the construction of a national data center that will support the government’s “digital sovereignty” initiative requiring all government data and digital platforms stored in foreign servers to be moved to the country. The EU has also been active in assisting African countries in developing digital regulatory frameworks through initiatives like the Policy and Regulation Initiative for Digital Africa (PRIDA) program. However, the lack of key technologies and technical standards to be exported along with these regulations has reduced the attractiveness of the EU’s offer vis-à-vis Chinese competitors.

The erosion of Europe’s influence in international technical standardization processes is another stumbling block to its digital ambitions. Despite having been at the forefront of international standardization organizations for decades, the growth and increased voting power of American and Chinese tech companies has undermined Europe’s leading position. Under its China Standards 2035 blueprint, the Chinese government has channeled state financial support and encouraged Chinese firms to submit technical contributions in standard-setting bodies and vote for them as a single bloc. This strategy has largely been successful in the 5G standard-setting process, with Huawei leading in approved technical contributions within 3GPP, the UN’s International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) subgroup developing global 5G standards.

The European Commission is cognizant of how its regulatory efforts are being outpaced and has stepped up efforts to increase its influence and involvement in the development of standards for emerging technologies. In its new Standardisation Strategy released in February 2022, it outlines a renewed approach to standardization to shape global standards in line with the EU’s digital interests and values. The strategy recognizes the importance of promoting and facilitating the adoption of European standards in partner regions like Africa, and commits to leveraging Global Gateway to promote these standardization projects.

Global Gateway is the product of the EU’s realization that its efforts to promote its digital agenda through its normative power alone are increasingly less successful. Building on existing initiatives like the Digital4Development (D4D) approach, the initiative aims to actively shape digital standards on the ground by incorporating digital technologies into the EU’s development agenda. In this sense, Global Gateway will offer digital economy packages that combine massive investments in infrastructure with country-level assistance to develop regulatory frameworks guided by the EU’s digital principles on protection of personal data, cybersecurity, and the right to privacy. In Nigeria, the EU has already announced its plan to invest 820 million euros to build digital infrastructure such as fiber optic cables and data centers along with developing regulatory frameworks that promote the EU’s digital governance standards.

Further announcements on project allocations have so far been limited, which has been attributed to internal disagreements among EU member states and with African governments on what projects to fund and which regions to prioritize. This slow start signals that a key challenge for the EU will be how to advance its digital agenda while meeting the development priorities of African partners. The priorities outlined in Global Gateway largely reflect the EU’s digital principles and normative framework, which can be perceived as Brussels dictating the strategic agendas of its African partners. Indeed, some voices in Africa have already expressed their disappointment at the lack of consultations with African stakeholders in the run up to the initiative’s launch.

Transatlantic cooperation can be instrumental in bringing an attractive offer to the table that creates tangible value for African partners while advancing a vision for the digital transformation that aligns with the EU’s values-driven digital ambitions. There is growing transatlantic convergence in reaction to China’s growing influence on the digital economy and developing countries, as illustrated by the creation of new initiatives like the EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council (TTC), which serves as a forum to coordinate trade and technology policies. With China shaping discourses around technology worldwide, the TTC could serve as a platform to construct a values-driven transatlantic framework for digital governance that appeals to African governments and can potentially bring African partners into these discussions.

Beyond building a values-based narrative around the digital economy, transatlantic cooperation can also be instrumental in creating a level playing field for European and American companies to compete with state-backed Chinese companies in Africa's digital sector. By pooling together resources with B3W, the EU could leverage its expertise in the creation of digital regulatory frameworks while tapping into the market dominance of U.S. companies that are well-positioned to compete in standard-setting with Chinese firms like Huawei. The TTC, which has a dedicated working group on technology standards cooperation, can serve as a vehicle to facilitate these discussions, bridge existing differences in regulatory regimes, and ensure regulatory compatibility and interoperability in emerging key technologies such as 5G and AI.

While Africa’s digital transformation offers the EU an opportunity to advance its digital model and position itself as a global player along with the U.S. and China, the bloc ultimately suffers from a weak digital industry, which can jeopardize its ability to translate its regulations and policy priorities into global technical standards implemented by tech companies. In this respect, forging a transatlantic coalition with the U.S. along with a values-driven digital model for African countries might be the only way for the EU to secure a degree of influence over Africa’s digital transformation.

Marta Granados Hernandez is a research intern with Reconnecting Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.