CyLab-Africa Summit on Digital Public Goods: Summary Report

CyLab-Africa Summit on Digital Public Goods: Summary Report

10-11 October, 2022

Introduction

The CyLab-Africa Summit on Digital Public Goods took place on 10-11 October 2022 at the CMU-Africa Campus In Kigali, Rwanda The theme of this conference was around ensuring the security, privacy, and fairness of digital public goods

In total, 132 people attended the summit which brought together stakeholders from across Africa, including government regulatory authorities, national central banks, telecommunications providers, healthcare providers, financial services companies, NGOs, and academia.

The format of the event involved a mixture of keynote speeches, panel discussions and lightning talks organized into four main sessions Session 1 aimed at covering the Security, Privacy, Fairness, and Sustainability of DPGs Session 2 was on Financial inclusion, Session 3 on Healthcare, and Session 4 on Agriculture. In addition to these four sessions, there were two poster and demo sessions that featured the work of CyLab-Africa students, staff, and faculty, as well as the work of external participants

This report prepared by the CyLab-Africa Team summarizes the main discussions held during the conference, including an overview of each of the main points discussed during each session in a chronological order.

There were scheduled times for formal and informal networking and conference participants were invited to attend the Gala dinner, hosted following the first day of conference proceedings.

Conference Objectives

There were four (4) main objectives for the conference.

● Drive research and development priorities by assessing and understanding the needs of the different stakeholders (e.g., government, users, development actors, industry, etc.)

● Establish a common understanding of technical requirements by highlighting the gaps in current systems and establishing a common understanding of technical meaning to security, privacy, and fairness

● Share knowledge and experiences with the different stakeholders, specifically, experience in large-scale DPG and infrastructure deployment

● Expand the Upanzi Network through the identification of common areas of research and education in the DPG domain and the co-designing/co-implementation/co-deployment of impactful solutions.

Acknowledgements

Funders/Sponsors

The CyLab-Africa Team would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, CMU-Africa, AFRETEC Network and its partner universities, and all of the additional sponsors who made this event a success.

Conference Organizers and Administrators

Prof. Giulia Fanti: Co-Director of CyLab-Africa, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University

Prof. Assane Gueye, Co-Director of CyLab-Africa, Associate Teaching Professor, Carnegie Mellon University Africa

Prof. Conrad Tucker, Arthur Hamerschlag Career Development Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University; Courtesy Appointments: Machine Learning, Robotics, Biomedical Engineering, CyLab Security & Privacy Institute

Isabelle Glassmith: Project Manager, Partnerships, CyLab

Michael Lisanti: Director of Partnerships, CyLab

Prof. Tim Brown: Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy, Director of Research, Carnegie Mellon University Africa

Lenah Chacha: Lab Manager, CyLab-Africa/Upanzi Network

Dr. Karen Sowon: Postdoctoral Research Associate, Carnegie Mellon University Africa

Dr. Edith Luhanga: Assistant Research Professor, Carnegie Mellon University Africa

Marie-Ange Rukundo-Kemenge: Events Manager, Carnegie Mellon University Africa

Olive Uwimana: Administrative Support Coordinator, Carnegie Mellon University Africa

Digital and Communications Team

Monica Sumbi: Associate Director of Marketing and Communications, Carnegie Mellon University Africa.

Jacqueline Bangirana: Social Media & PR Officer, Carnegie Mellon University Africa

Nick Carney: Creative Services Manager, Carnegie Mellon University Africa

Special Acknowledgements

In addition to the individuals and organizations acknowledged above, we would also like to express our heartfelt gratitude to all our CyLab-Africa Research Assistants and Engineers who worked tirelessly to make the summit a success.

We would also like to give our warmest thank you to each and every conference participant for taking the time and effort to participate in the CyLab-Africa Digital Public Goods Summit. We would also wish to acknowledge and give our special thanks to Honorable Paula Ingabire, Minister of Information and Communications technology and Innovation, Rwanda. Honorable Dr. Austin Demby, Minister of Health, Sierra Leone and his delegation, and Honorable Dr. Ngamije Daniel, Minister of Health, Rwanda.

We look forward to further collaboration to make digital public goods secure, private and fair for everyone!

Conference Agenda

Day 1: October 10, 2022 Time Topic Speaker

8:00 - 9:00 am Registration

9:00 - 9:15 am

Opening Remarks:

Welcome to the CyLab-Africa Summit for Digital Public Goods

Allen Robinson Director of CMU-Africa

Assane Gueye & Giulia Fanti Co-Directors of CyLab Africa

Session 1: Security, Privacy, Fairness, and Sustainability of DPGs

Welcome to Session 1

9:15 - 9:20 am

Security, Privacy, Fairness, and Sustainability of DPGs

Assane Gueye

Co-Director of CyLab-Africa

9:20 - 9:50 am Keynote Building cybersecurity capacity and research in Paula Ingabire Minister of Information and

9:50 - 10:30 am

Africa

Panel

Building secure and private digital public goods and digital public infrastructure

Communications technology and Innovation, Rwanda

Dr Melissa Omino

Acting Director, Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law (CIPIT), Strathmore University

Gautham Ravichander Director, eGov

Vyas Sekar

Tan Family Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University

Moderator: Assane Gueye

Co-Director of CyLab-Africa, Associate Professor, CMU-Africa

10:30 - 10:45 am

10:45 - 10:52 am

Coffee Break

Lightning talk

The role of human agents in enabling digital financial inclusion

Karen Sowon

Postdoctoral Researcher, Carnegie Mellon University

10:53 - 11:00 am

Lightning talk

Open AI as a Digital Public Good – the case of speech technology

Golo Rademacher GIZ Fair Forward

11:01 - 11:08 am

Lightning talk

Designing the Next Generation of Gov Services with GovStack Global

Concorde Kananura

Regional Coordinator for Africa, GovStack

11:10 - 11:50 am

Panel

Data sovereignty, data locality, and data sharing in Africa

Mohamed Mubashir Massaquoi

Director General, National Civil Registration Authority of Sierra Leone

Ouanilo Jérôme Medegan

Director General, National Agency of Security for Information Systems (ANSSI), Benin

Arlette Rwakazina

11:51 - 11:58 am

Lightning Talk PicoCTF: Building cybersecurity capacity at scale

General Manager, Cybersecurity and Innovation, Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority

Phidelis Suwedi

Senior Technical Advisor, Digital Health at Clinton Health Access Initiative

Moderator:

Giulia Fanti

Co-Director of CyLab-Africa, Assistant Professor, CMU

Lenah Chacha

Lab Manager, CyLab-Africa and Upanzi Network

11:59-12:06 pm

Lightning Talk

Sustainability and fairness of DPIs – Lessons from the ground

Mitul Thapliyal

Partner – Government and Social Impact, MicroSave Consulting (MSC)

12:07-12:14 pm

Lightning Talk

Securing DPGs at scale: Lessons and challenges from scaling RapidPro at UNICEF

Evan Wheeler

ICT Manager, UNICEF Digital Centre of Excellence

12:15 - 1:15 pm

Lunch

1:15 - 2 pm Demo and Poster Session

Attendees and CMU-Africa students

2:10 - 2:15 pm

2:15 - 2:45 pm

Session 2: Financial Inclusion

Welcome to Session 2

Keynote

UPI: A possible Sovereign Real Time Payment Solution for the World

Large-scale financial inclusion through interoperability: Lessons learned from the Unified Payment Interface

Giulia Fanti

Co-Director of CyLab Africa

Nehal Shah

In-charge – Business

Development, MENA region, National Payments Corporation of India

2:45 - 3:25 pm

Panel

The role of digital identity platforms in digital financial inclusion

Jacki O’Neill

Director, Microsoft Africa Research Institute

3:25 - 3:40 pm

Coffee Break

3:40 - 3:47 pm

Lightning Talk Digital ID requirements and 3rd party SIM card registration practices in East Africa

Ramesh Narayanan CTO, MOSIP

Fahd Salek

Economy Digital Transformation Unit Manager, Digital Development Agency, Morocco

Al Shiferaw Lead, Ethiopian Digital ID Advisory Council

Moderator: Kanwaljit Singh

Senior Program Officer, Financial Services for the Poor, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

3:48 - 3:55 pm

Lightning Talk Financial inclusion: Technology, people, money?

Edith Luhanga

Assistant Research Professor, Carnegie Mellon University-Africa

Jacki O'Neill Director, Microsoft Africa Research Institute

3:56 - 4:03 pm

Lightning Talk Designing Technologies for Societal Impact

Sello Boshomane

SADC Payment Systems Projects Coordinator, SADC Banking Association

4:05 - 4:45 pm

Panel

The future of financial interoperability

Dr. Ibrahim Stevens Deputy Bank Governor of Sierra Leone

Sello Boshomane

SADC Payment Systems Projects Coordinator, SADC Banking Association

John Karamuka

Director in Charge of Payment Systems, National Bank of Rwanda

4:45 - 5:00 pm

5:00 - 5:07 pm

Coffee Break

Lightning Talk Building a sustainable technology for digital financial inclusion

Kuassi Ayikué Satchivi, Head of Digital Development Unit, Financial Inclusion Division, Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO)

Moderator: Priyadarshini D Carnegie India

5:08 - 5:15 pm

Lightning Talk Digital ID and data privacy regulation

5:15 - 5:30 pm Short Talk

Leveraging the transparency and trust of digital ledgers to bring down the high costs of international remittances

5:30-5:45 Day 1 Wrap up

7:00 pm Dinner

Day 2: October 11, 2022

Michael Mbuthia

Regional Director, East Africa, AfricaNenda

Fiacre N. Mushimire Policy Lead at the Centre for Financial Regulation and Inclusion (CENFRI)

Ian Putter, Head Blockchain Centre of Excellence for Standard Bank

Assane & Giulia

Time Topic Speaker Session 3: Healthcare

9:00 am - 9:05 am Welcome to Session 3: Healthcare

Conrad Tucker Arthur Hamerschlag Career Development Professor of Mechanical Engineering, CMU

9:05 - 9:35 am

Healthcare Keynote: Leveraging Innovations and Technologies in the journey towards reducing Maternal Mortality

Dr. Austin Demby Minister of Health, Sierra Leone

9:35 - 9:40am

9:40 - 10:20am Panel

Break (setting up for panel)

Overcoming the Scaling and Integration Challenges of Healthcare DPGs

Noella Bigirimana Deputy Director General, Rwanda Biomedical Centre

Himanshu Nagpal

Deputy Director, Global Health at Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Johan Ivar Sæbø

Associate Professor, University of Oslo, Norway, DHIS2

Moderator

Conrad Tucker Arthur Hamerschlag Career Development Professor of Mechanical Engineering, CMU

10:25 - 10:32am

Lightning talk

Towards an Open Data Pathway for Digital Public Goods: A Digital Health Case Study from Sierra Leone

Nathaniel Houston-Suluku Digital Health Professional

10:33 - 10:40

Lightning talk

Extending healthcare beyond the clinic: language models as public infrastructure

Jacki O’Neill Director, Microsoft Africa Research Institute

10:41 - 11:00 am

Coffee Break

11:00 - 11:40 am Panel Healthcare DPG Deployment and Security: Hosting Locally or in the Cloud?

Pradipta Kundu Director, eGov

Phidelis Suwedi

Senior Technical Advisor, Digital Health at Clinton Health Access Initiative

Tom Oluoch Co-Founder and Chairman at Kenya Health Informatics Association - KeHIA

Moderator: Dr. Karen Sowon

Postdoctoral Researcher, Carnegie Mellon University

11:43 am-12:00 pm

Lightning Talk

DIVOC: Catalysing DPI across 5 countries during a global pandemic

Pradipta Kundu Director, eGov

12:01 - 12:08 pm

Lightning talk

Navigating digital gaps and cultural dynamics to promote fairness and inclusivity of digital health innovations

Wallace Chigona

Professor, School of IT, University of Cape Town

12:09 - 1:25 pm

1:25 - 2:10 pm

1:25 - 2:10 pm

(Parallel track)

Lunch

Demo and Poster Session

PicoCTF Info Session

(CyLab-Africa Upanzi Lab, 1st floor)

Attendees and CMU-Africa students

Lenah Chacha

Lab Manager, CyLab-Africa and Upanzi Network

2:10 - 2:15

2:15 - 2:45 pm

Session 4: Agriculture

Welcome to Session 4: Agriculture

Keynote

Incentives and roles across the agricultural data exchange ecosystem to enable farmer-level impact

Assane Gueye

Co-Director of CyLab-Africa

Vineet Singh

Senior Platform Architect, Digital Green

2:45 - 3:25 pm

Panel

Scaling up digital agriculture in Africa

Dr. Racine Ly, Director, Data Management, Digital Products and Technology, AKADEMIYA2063

Dawit Phillipos

Chief Operating Officer, Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Institute

Dr Kennedy Senagi

Data Management, Modelling and Geo-Information Unit, International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE)

3:25 - 3:40 pm

Coffee Break

Moderator:

Tim Brown

Director of Research, CMU-Africa

3:40 - 3:47 pm

Lightning Talk Software and Data Engineering Approaches for Managing Digital Public Goods - Scientific Data: Case of icipe"

Dr. Kennedy Senagi Data Management, Modelling and Geo-Information Unit, International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE)

3:48 - 3:55 pm

3:56 - 4:03 pm

Lightning Talk Experience Learned with Project Tolbi

Lightning Talk Earth Observation Data for Sustainable Farming

Ahmath Bamba Mbake Professor, UCAD-ESP, Dakar

Dr. Yves Hategekimana Head of the Earth Observation Department, Rwanda Space Agency

4:05 - 4:45 pm

Panel Boosting resilient agriculture and data-driven practices

Joseph Abakunda

Chief Strategy Officer, Rwanda Space Agency

Richard Ferguson, Vice Chancellor, Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture (RICA)

Vineet Singh

Senior Platform Architect, Digital Green

Moderator: Dr. Edith Luhanga

Assistant Research Professor, Carnegie Mellon University-Africa

4:45 - 4:52 pm

Lightning Talk IDEA – AgriStack to create a digital agriculture ecosystem in India

Mitul Thapliyal Partner – Government and Social Impact, MicroSave Consulting (MSC)

4:53 - 5:00 pm

Lightning Talk Leveraging IoT to improve water efficiency in agriculture

Alfred Ntaganda

Information Security Analyst (RISA)

Session 1: Security, Privacy, Fairness, and Sustainability of DPGs

Keynote by Hon. Minister of ICT (Rwanda) - Ms. Paula Ingabire

The minister spoke about the role that digital public goods (DPGs) have played in transforming service delivery in sectors such as healthcare, agriculture, and financial services around the continent, and how this has in turn led to progress towards some of the sustainable development goal targets. She also highlighted how the digital investments over the years enabled Africa’s rapid scale up of services such as mobile financial services during the pandemic.

The minister pointed out that the digital shift means online privacy and security should be everyone’s concern and highlighted Rwanda’s cybersecurity initiatives such as the establishment of the National Cybersecurity Authority. She then spoke about the importance of data regulations to dictate how people’s personal data is used and to ensure data is used well in data-driven decision making. She advocated for tools for digital financial inclusion for our citizens. She commended CMU’s picoCTF cybersecurity workforce development pipeline platform and competition, committing support to scale it even further beyond the initial Africa competition held in March 2022

She asked the audience to reflect on how we can build a culture of research and innovation in cybersafe as partnerships and collaborations are key for progress, quoting the African proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone If you want to go far, go together”

Panel: Building secure and private DPGs and DPI

When we talk about secure DPGs and DPIs, what bells ring in your head?

The panelists' responses revolved around trustworthiness and scalability as a key for secure DPGs. Dr. Omino talked about inclusion being important for promoting trust among end-users. Mr. Ravichander talked about the need for secure code i.e. well implemented solutions and Dr. Sekar talked about the need for academics to think about how to design solutions that can scale beyond academic prototypes This means thinking about how to handle diversity of users, deployments, and policies when considering designs

When we talk of security, privacy, and fairness, what comes to mind?

The question was directed to the minister of health for Sierra Leone, Dr Dembi, and the minister for ICT for Rwanda, Ms Ingabire Dr Dembi felt fairness meant equity in design i e ensuring solutions don’t just work for urban and educated populations but also for rural and undereducated populations. He also felt end-user trust can be built by providers developing a track record of security and privacy over time and highlighted a need for building DPGs that can be used as platforms for proving this record.

Ms. Ingabire felt solutions should be built with a privacy-first and security-first mindset and this can be achieved by ensuring standards are available that can translate to design principles during implementation.

What are the challenges when developing a DPG with a security and privacy view from the design first?

Panelists pointed out that first there is a need for two (2) sets of principles - one aimed at good service provision and the other on privacy/security. When developing privacy/security principles, the minimum amount of data that is needed to provide the desired service quality should be determined. Second, practices need to be developed based on the principles and developers should be evaluated on their ability to implement these practices from the first day of software development

What should be the interaction between regulations and technology?

Dr Omino mentioned three possible (3) approaches that can be used: (i) Innovating and then regulating the innovations; (ii) developing regulations and policies first before innovating; (iii) doing innovations and regulations development simultaneously The best approach will depend on the context but all approaches will require stakeholders who can link the three areas - technology, regulations, and policies - together.

What is the academic take on designing for the people and the intersection between regulation and innovation?

Dr. Sekar talked about the strengths that academia can bring to regulating. First, academics often take a long-term view (10 or more years) and are therefore able to provide insight to policymakers on what infrastructures, systems and algorithms might emerge and how adequate existing policies might work in bringing these systems into reality and in managing them. Second, academics are able to bring neutrality in the evaluation of systems as they are usually uninvested in a particular technology or approach, including open-source vs proprietary

Audience questions

How can trust be engineered or designed on a wider scale? In Scandinavia, people trust electronic records despite the information being very detailed and public because they have a long history of not having that information misused.

Dr Sekar discussed the need for engineers to understand what privacy/security concerns end users have and ensure solutions address these concerns. Dr. Omino spoke on the need for legal protections and providing civic education to ensure end users understand how their rights will be protected. Mr. Ravichander spoke on 3 layers of trust promotion; Layer 1 is ensuring promises made are fulfilled while layer 2 is getting users consent on what data is collected and who the data is shared with and layer 3 is allowing users to withdraw consent at any point.

How do we secure open-source the way we want?

Panelists spoke on the need to educate people on the mistaken perception that “open-source” isn’t secure because all details are visible to everyone. Dr. Sekar pointed out that even closed-source code has dependencies and that the risks associated with these dependencies aren't always known as some risks only develop after deployment, making risk assessment a continuous process With open-source solutions, it is possible for developers to independently evaluate the risks of all the components used in the final system and address them in a timely manner Dr Omino further highlighted that open-source allows developers to collaborate in risk analysis and mitigation, possibly making the solutions more

robust. Mr. Ravichander talked about the need to build cybersecure behaviors and habits among end-users since studies show they are the weakest privacy/security link.

Lightning talk: The role of human agents in enabling digital financial inclusion

The talk presented initial results from an interview study conducted in Kenya, Tanzania, and Rwanda The results showed that:

● End users trust agents to provide services such as resolving wrongful transactions as the traditional approaches (end user liaising with customer service or using auto-reversing through the mobile menu) were difficult and the users were afraid of making mistakes

● Agents are responsible for enforcing know-your-customer (KYC) requirements such as confirming the identity of the person withdrawing cash in Kenya but agents often don’t enforce these when they know the client. As KYC checks are seen as burdensome, clients prefer to use known agents.

● Transactions often require verbal confirmation of sensitive details e.g. transaction amount. This is seen as a privacy/security risk by end users and results in behavior change. Overall, the results challenge the traditional view that users directly interacting with technology. The reality is that human actors (agents) mediate the interaction in DPGs. The open question is how can we design more usable, secure and private human-agent interactions?

Lightning talk: Open AI as a digital public good - the case of speech technology

Various cultures around the world are used to accessing information verbally Speech technologies are a more natural means of interacting with technology for people in these cultures but only 20 of the 7,000 languages in the world are high resource. This talk presented the various tools GIZ has developed for using speech technology in Kinyarwanda. There was a focus on using open data and technologies as is common with GIZ projects across all partner countries. When developing the technologies, the following challenges were encountered:

● Lack of a tonal dictionary

● Little local capacity in natural language processing (NLP)

● Low amounts of data

GIZ started a capacity building program to produce more NLP experts in Rwanda.

Lightning talk: Designing the next generation of government services with GovStack Global

The theme of the talk was on the need for government services that meet people’s expectations of digital services “just working”. GovStack is a partnership of 4 implementation partners including the government of Estonia, ITU, GIZ, and Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL). The talk introduced next generation government services being built by GovStack using reusable open source components. Current work in Africa is being conducted in Rwanda, Kenya, Djibouti, and Egypt. Other countries can become implementing partners and contribute to developing and reviewing building block specifications and in the learning and exchange areas as part of the communities of practice.

Panel: Data Sovereignty, data locality, and data sharing in Africa

● Panelists underscored the need to share data among institutions, governments, and between governments and the private sector as this propels growth for all players involved This process

however must be regulated to preserve privacy of data providers in some cases, especially in healthcare. The need to regulate data sharing is further heightened by lack of capacity of most African governments to build ICT capacity required to access, use, and share data. On data locality, panelists agreed storing national data within national borders is the most secure approach but emphasized ICT capacity limitations as valid reasons for outsourcing such services. Another disincentive is that localization leads to decentralization of data on the same subject European providers were preferred by panelists for such services since they provide better data protection and data control to their customers Panelists also noticed that some ISPs on the continent provide data services including storage, thereby giving nations options that never existed before Some risks of outsourcing data storage were mentioned including a recent occurrence where some countries were asked to collect their data from data centers within a few days because of the Ukrainian crisis

● Benin stressed the importance of sharing attacks – be it networks or any sort of cybersecurity attack – data among nations since such data provides insight that could help prevent similar attacks in the future. In this regard, Benin has a honeypot that collects and shares attack related data. This data is anonymized to protect privacy of data providers. Anonymization of shared data is a must especially when some data providers are competitors. Anonymizing and encrypting data before storage is the strategy adopted by the Rwandan Space Agency. Sierra Leone emphasized the importance of continuous training of human resources to support technology since technology can fail at any time. Panelists agreed that the data sharing process should be a consultative one, involving all stakeholders. Communication must also be as clear and simple as possible.

● On whether regulation should precede innovation in data sharing, panelists believed innovation is usually ahead of regulation Governments are expected to keep tabs on innovation so they can regulate appropriately Governments were advised to be agile in their approach towards regulation and to avoid creating one-size-fit-all regulations

Lightning talk: picoCTF - Building cybersecurity capacity in Africa

Cybersecurity training presents a pipeline challenge in that most young learners have no interest in pursuing careers in cybersecurity at a much younger age To solve this challenge we need to introduce security at a lower stage in the education pipeline unlike the norm now which is in colleges/universities or workplaces. At CyLab-Africa we have launched the picoCTF-Africa program to assist in alleviation of this problem. PicoCTF-Africa launch program was done in March 2022 and attracted 900+ participants of which 20% were women.For picoCTF-Africa 2.0 we would like to increase these numbers with 80% of African countries participating, increase the number of women and get more universities directly involved.

PicoCTF-Africa is open collaboration with universities, high schools, country education boards, and ministries of ICT.

PicoCTF- Africa is also looking for organizations that can support the program to keep it open and free for all.

Lightning talk: Sustainability and fairness of DPGs - lessons from the ground

The talk presented lessons learned from the deployment of the Aadhar digital ID system in India, which is the largest digital ID system in the world The Government of India spent around $1 8 billion to issue IDs to 1 2 billion people and spends $128 million yearly to maintain Aadhar

The fairness of Aadhar can be viewed through a financial lens. Before Aadhar, the cost of serving people through banks was $5. Aadhar processes 1.5 billion transactions each month and it costs 0.06 cent to run each transaction. Only $0.02 cent is passed on to the companies because the government subsidizes the cost. Aadhar is a fairer solution than previous systems because more people, including the poor and minorities, are now included due to the lower cost.

From the deployment of Aadhar, some of the criteria found to be important for sustainable DPGs were: law, policy, and regulations and architecture and design of the systems.

Lightning talk: Securing DPGs at scale - Lessons and challenges from scaling RapidPro at UNICEF

RapidPro is a digital communications platform that allows people to develop chatbots and surveys to automate gathering and dissemination of knowledge at scale RapidPro sends/receives 930 million messages in more than 117 countries for more than 420 programmatic interventions. Implementers found there are many risks brought about by this volume of transactions but many do not have readily available solutions (no roadmap). For example, RapidPro has multiple releases a year with over 50 contributors and 3 programming languages and each programmatic intervention has its own user access controls and thousands of users. An open question is how to verify the implementations are running transactions in the same way? Another highlighted question is how do you generate information on data biases that might exist in a dataset, given the data generation process used, so as to guide data users on what analysis can be run without providing wrongful conclusions?

Session 2: Financial Inclusion

Keynote by Nehal Shah

Nehal Shah from National Payments Corporation of India (NCPI) highlighted India’s Motivations for a Unified Payment Interface (UPI) which entailed provision of inclusive, interoperable and affordable payment Rather than providing an innovation that would create competition among stakeholders, UPI provided a unified payment platform Nehal indicated that NCPI has grown to provide approximately 11 different products Following local success in India, NCPI has been going international to provide the platform in other countries In terms of reach and access, 358/1200 banks have adopted the platform, more than 300 million consumers (approximately 25% coverage) and 200+ merchants within 6 years UPI adopts a bank to bank model to ensure greater access to bank accounts The infrastructure is open source and this takes care of expenses on storage and other infrastructure. Transactions are not charged and this ensures affordability of transactions. The platform can connect to any bank (no need for a reciprocated application on the receiving end) ensures interoperability. To ensure trust and security, the platform runs on aliases which are dynamic. Trust is engendered by the availability of the network (100% up-time)

Multiple serving channels means users can enter the UPI ID at the ATM, enter a password delivered on their phone, and be able to access their cash. All the above factors, on how fast, how easy and how secure and trustable has engendered trust for many of the consumers/users in India. Users, merchants, fintechs and central banks are all connected on the platform. Future steps include having a sovereign platform

Panel 1: The role of digital identity platforms in digital financial inclusion

The panel began by challenging the definition and role of digital IDs in financial inclusion. It emphasized the need for de-linking financial inclusion from digital payments. This is important given that the goal of financial inclusion is to allow people to partake in the financial system while having enough money for one’s living. This remains unattainable so long as people do not have money no matter what digital payment options were accessible to an individual. A classic example of where this can be seen happening is in the UK, where despite the fact that the vast majority of transactions are digital, financial inclusion seems to be rapidly decreasing. The panel emphasized that it is too easy to think that technology is the solution, whereas what we need to be thinking about is non-technological and social issues.

This panel also raised issues to consider in the pursuit of digital identity, referring to the privacy and anonymity that various identities that are not so well connected and are different on various platforms offer to users For example, governments that have all an individual’s information from a single identity could misappropriate it, leading to a huge loss in privacy The key message was that digital identities could open people up to persecution and that if digital money is the answer, then we are likely asking the wrong question

In addressing more specifically the role of Digital IDs in enabling Financial Inclusion, the real benefit for digital IDs lies in its potential to address the difficulty that people experience in proving their identity; one of the main barriers to account driven financial inclusion. Beyond access to documentation, the high cost incurred in authenticating the documents, constrain providers from extending financial access to the citizens. Leveraging technology to have identification that can be authenticated on the spot may ease some of these challenges

The panelists highlighted the digital ID adoption experiences in Ethiopia and Morocco The motivation for Digital ID in Ethiopia was to ensure people get access to financial services Being able to receive money digitally plays a role in being able to participate financially One of the challenges with traditional authentication is that it is dependent on a human agent to validate documents and credentials For example, for most banks in Ethiopia, it takes 3 weeks for KYC to confirm that individuals are who they say they are and this turnaround time decreases motivation to follow KYC. Digital ID which leverages technology to authenticate users is likely to alleviate this problem. Ethiopia is looking to learn from the implementations in other countries by talking to the relevant stakeholders. In Morocco, Mr Fahd indicated that IDs are becoming fundamental to more issues than just financial inclusion by helping to determine a household's qualification for financial aid.

In response to use-cases that the countries are going after with the use of MOSIP digital identity platform the panel pointed out the potential benefit of MOSIP to healthcare, agriculture, and social protection. Digital IDs can lower the friction in access to services. MOSIP addresses important security and privacy risks in their deployment by taking into account the following issues:

● Trust - Deployments focus on being user-centric In this sense, MOSIP locks user data and controls who has access to it with end-to-end encryption Data is only made available on a need to know basis Any individuals whose data is required must be involved and must consent to the decryption of their data to be sent to the stakeholders that needs it, e g a bank

● Users also choose which service provider to use so that they are not locked down to one particular provider

Lightning Talk 1: Digital ID requirements and 3rd party SIM card registration practices in East Africa

Assistant Professor, CMU, Dr Edith Luhanga presented preliminary insights on 3rd party SIM card use that highlights the need to consider digital IDs. Mobile money is responsible for the rapid growth in the number of people who own accounts in Africa, but 18% of people (285 million people) in 7 countries, including 4 African countries, use SIM cards registered under another person’s ID (3rd party SIM)

The preliminary results of a study to understand the use of third party SIM cards in Kenya and Tanzania highlight the following reasons as to why people use 3rd party SIM cards:

● Most people wait for months to get their ID after registration and this led them to use SIM cards under another’s ID”

● Perceived lack of privacy when strangers have to know personal details such as real names when completing mobile money transactions. Some of the concerns people raised included ethnic profiling.

In turn, the use of 3rd party SIM cards affects how people use services such as digital financial services. Most of the 3rd party SIM card users actively avoid using mobile money for savings or microloans In Kenya, the main concern was that agents require users to present an ID when doing withdrawals while in Tanzania, the main concern was that if you lose a SIM card, you are not able to regain access to the mobile money wallet unless the person who registered it helps

How can we reduce the need for 3rd party SIM cards?

● The data points to the need to simplify the ID registration journey which is consistently the hardest challenge for people

● Ensure proper resourcing to mitigate for problems arising from lack of application forms would and failed biometrics technology that forced people to have to return a different day.

● Address exclusion challenges in current ID procedures for groups like orphans who cannot provide the information needed to prove their eligibility for an ID. Not having an ID then excludes them from schooling, employment, and business opportunities.

Open challenges include:

● How to keep due diligence in the ID registration process without excluding certain groups.

● Identifying the barriers that might restrict further digitization of the ID registration process and how we address these

Lightning Talk 2: Financial inclusion: Technology, people, money?

This talk focused on the centrality of human infrastructure to financial inclusion. Technology that amplifies human work is what makes financial services more inclusive rather than just the use of technology alone. Jacki emphasized that use of technology and digital payments does not necessarily equal meaningful inclusion. Formal financial services are also not always better than informal financial services. The key takeaway for this message was that in addition to pursuing the 5 A’a of financial inclusion: Availability, Accessibility, acceptability, affordability and awareness, an important question should always be ‘What for’? This is important because financial inclusion technology can have some unintended outcome. Financial inclusion is a structural problem that financial technology alone cannot solve.

Lightning Talk 3: Improving IT infrastructure for financial inclusion

The speaker highlighted how the data protection laws that we are enforcing on the data level in Africa will have some consequences because while it protects users, it may limit data movement. For example, a resident of one country visiting another country and needing to get a SIM card will leave their personal data to a country that cares less about their data. He emphasized the need for a mechanism that

transcends borders to make data privacy regulation cross-border. We need to rethink what it takes to protect citizen’s data. If a system is built for government use, can a citizen still opt out depending on its use of data? Can the citizen decide how they want the data to be used? These are important questions with no easy answers.

Panel 1: The future of Financial Interoperability

One of the biggest issues with access is the cost of transactions The panelists reiterated the need to have interoperability across borders Interoperability encompasses physical and legal infrastructure, affordability, and trust Countries with fragmented policies make it difficult to interoperate The starting point should therefore be to research on how we can enhance the harmonization of the policies and have studies on how existing technologies can speak to each other Interoperability has to balance economic incentives but ensure that the current systems are sustainable There is a lack of atomicity in payments in the implemented systems This has been seen in cases where an inter-country payment succeeds in one country and fails in another.

Some African countries are taking necessary steps in the right direction In the quest for interoperability, Sierra Leone has recently adopted a national gateway It is also critical pursuing financial inclusion that players work together. Banks and non-banks can operate in a single scheme and regulators can work to ensure that all players have appropriate licenses. West Africa has recently embarked on a single payment system initiative for instant payment to be used in the eight countries. The project will be championed by the central banks. Some foreseen challenges relate to human capacity and technological infrastructure.

Lightning talk 4: Building a sustainable technology for financial inclusion

As at 2022, we have 400 million adults in Africa who lack access to a financial account. The challenges remain the same: long distances to financial institutions and infrastructures like ATMs, limited access to mobile phones, lack of trust in financial institutions, and lack of skills in using these digital technologies. The state of payment technology in Africa is wanting and largely poor. For example, while there is increasing regional cross-border payments infrastructure, it takes longer to transfer money across the borders. A possible way forward could be to aggregate mobile financial services into a national switch which enables cross-border payments. Rwanda, Kenya, and Ethiopia have begun doing this.

Lightning talk 5: Designing technologies for societal impact

What is the best model for SADC to implement to remove barriers in regional trade and investment? Five distinguishing attributes came up. The first is a central operating model where each of the 16 countries in SADC have accounts and do clearing through one switch. This allows the solution to be lifted and hosted in another country if need be. Another is interoperability. The system also has to be cost effective and speedy.

Session 3: Healthcare

Keynote : - Leveraging innovations and Technologies in the journey towards reducing Maternal Mortality. Hon. Austin Demby, Minister of Health, Sierra Leone

Global SDGs oblige all nations to : A duty and obligation to ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing at all ages, Universal health coverage and presence of systems built on primary health care principles Sierra Leone has adopted a continuum of care approach to follow a patient through life stages and provide preventive care through medical incidents, rehabilitation and maintenance When the Ebola crisis hit, 2000 people died per year and an emergency was declared There are a similar number of maternal deaths now and it is time for an emergency response Innovative solutions need to be created that are user friendly and for all and especially to be used in remote low resource areas Innovative solutions should take advantage of the good cell phone penetration Caution should however be taken by technologists in that the design of such solutions involves the end users through and through Solutions should be created ‘for people and ‘with’ them ’ This is especially important when reaching the last mile is important. Reaching the last mile is a challenge and we all need to think about innovative ways to reach the last mile with the help of navigators.

Panel: Overcoming the scaling and Integration Challenges of healthcare

DPGs

Digitization is a major factor in management of existing and emerging diseases like COVID-19 in the case of DHIS2 In the case of epidemics, scalability should be an important consideration in design and development of healthcare DPGs Scalability should be integrated at both the pilot and roll-out stages Further, pilots should be done with intentional commitments and not for too long lest intended goals cannot be achieved Another aspect that needs to be considered for scalability is the aspect of user involvement in all stages of deployment, i e pilot to roll-out

Lightning Talk: Towards an Open Data Pathway for Digital Public Goods: A digital health Case Study from Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone is using an open data model to leverage mobile technology and data to improve healthcare Using artificial Intelligence delivered through android and IoS phones, health workers can reach more people in rural areas to overcome healthcare challenges to same more lives and save costs

Lightning Talk: Extending healthcare beyond the clinic: Language models as public infrastructure

COVID19 is a clear proof that healthcare is still a challenge worldwide. People die with preventable and treatable diseases despite great progress in vaccine development and cancer diagnosis. A stressed healthcare system is a constant challenge to development of a people-centered care. We must use available technologies and trends like the use of mobile phones to enable patient-care in the systems. It is cumbersome for health workers to receive and process 1000 messages in addition to face-to-face sessions. Natural Language Processing ( NLP) has been applied in the Jacaranda Health for Maternal health to reduce the burden on health workers. Jacaranda is a Q&A service in Swahili, Sheng, Luo etc. that receives 2500 messages per day and has 18 full-time caregivers. The challenge experiences include the presence of a very unbalanced datasheet, existence of non-urgent messages and labels that are not scalable to new countries especially if reused for other diseases. This project also has a challenge of a mixed language dataset as also seen in the EpoCH project Our recommendation is that NLP needs to be supported with plug and play cognitive and AI services Further there should be more propositions of solutions that enhance health workers’ ability and speed instead of replacing them

Panel: Healthcare DPG Deployment and Security: Hosting Locally or in the cloud

Integration and interoperability comes with a lot of data, and in healthcare this means massive private data When deploying healthcare DPGs one concern that comes up is where the system should be deployed; on premise or on the cloud In Africa, we have a change of trends and growth in infrastructure and setting up of data centers and the investment in infrastructure Data centers on the continent help to reduce latencies to access of information and while some countries like South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria have these infrastructures in place, other countries are still struggling.

Most countries are now realizing the benefits of cloud-based hosting especially if they do not have the financial and skill-set resources to manage their own data centers. Adoption is however slowed down because of non-existent policies and guidelines to give guidance on how the services should be used.

One major perceived benefit of on-premise hosting is control and security. While this is a constant problem around confidentiality, Integrity and Availability of data, our recommendations are for each country through their cybersecurity programs and authority/regulators have data privacy and security guidelines to help provide a criteria for trust between the service provider and the data owner. What most countries have done is to provide guidelines on what factors an organization should look at to guarantee that they still have control over their data Countries are the custodians of the right to decide on where to host the data However, whether hosted online on on-premise, protective and detective measures should be put in place to protect the infrastructure beside all security being built-in in the softwares It should never be assumed that the provider has a one-fit-all security solution Attack vectors differ case-by-case

Hosting decisions have to be made after an objective risk assessment of the risks and opportunities from the different hosting options and how this decision will affect data sovereinity principles of a country

Lightning Talk: DIVOC - catalyzing DPI across 5 countries during a global pandemic

DIVOC’s goal was to roll out a digitally verifiable certificate that is rapidly rolled out to citizens at a click of a button and through different channels. DIVOC partnered with various stakeholders from which this helped determine the standards in place and facilitated interoperability with various systems in other countries. Thinking about interoperability standards and specifications from the word go allowed DIVOC to scale rapidly.

DIVOC’s next step is to roll out the system to provide verifiable tamper proof health documents.

Lightning Talk: navigating digital gaps and cultural dynamics to promote fairness and inclusivity of digital health innovations

When we talk about healthcare and inequality are concepts that go hand-in-hand, and gets worse with the introduction of digital health. Despite the hype about mobile phones, there is still a divide between urban and rural areas and there is still a huge divide between men and women. When we are deploying technology, we therefore need to think about ‘who’ especially given the digital divide. For example, if women are given a phone, are they able to read, write and use the phones? Inclusive designs need to built with the following considerations continuous legitimations of the system of the users, take cultural context into account/leverage cultural systems e.g. including older women in the community, create a community of purpose, use and manage infomediaries to allow people without access to technology to access the intervention and go for frugal innovations

Session 4: Agriculture

Keynote : Incentives and roles across the agricultural data exchange ecosystem to enable farmer-level impact, Mr. Vineet Singh

Global NGOs like Digital Green – based mainly in Africa and India - work to increase the income of farmers by working with Extension workers who are known and trusted by farmers. They share best practices, training, and empowerment videos with farmers using Extension workers as agents. Extension officers serve the dual purpose of collecting data from farmers and sharing useful information with them. The impact of Digital Green is an estimated 17% increase in income for farmers (source: Digital Green). To enable data re-use, Digital Green developed a tool called FarmStack, which is a pipeline for sharing data among farmers and farmer communities.

Panel : Scaling Up Agriculture In Africa

Dr. Kennedy Senagi of International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology, asserted that scaling agriculture involves training farmers to use technology effectively. On top of that, technology must obey the 3As: Awareness - its existence should be known by farmers, Accessibility - it should be accessible to farmers, and Affordability - affordable to farmers. We need to move away from thinking of scaling as a matter of moving technology to farmers since

most farmers are not IT experts or have little information about technology usage. There are GIS technologies that help farmers, and third parties to monitor farming patterns from a distance. This data can assist in determining which plants to grow and the type of insecticide to apply thereby boosting productivity.

On whether GMOs are good or bad for farmers, Dr Kennedy Senagi thinks GMOs could help farmers scale but unregulated they could cause the banning of farm products in some markets.

Dr Racine Ly, Director, Data Management, Digital Products and Technology, AKADEMIYA2063, proposed sharing and treating data as a DPG. He believed if data is public and shared, interested parties like data scientists and researchers could provide insightful solutions to farmers and other stakeholders.

Collaboration with farmers as we propose, and prototype software solutions was encouraged since farmers understand their settings better and are the actual users of these systems.

Dr. Racine Ly also suggested the creation of a DPG to learn or capture lessons learnt from various projects in the agricultural sector

Lightning talk: Software and data engineering approaches for managing DPGs - scientific data - case of icipe - Dr. Kennedy Senagi

Dr. Kennedy Senagi of Data Management, Modelling and Geo-Information Unit of International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) explained that the core business of the center is insect science, mainly how insects affect humans, animals, and the environment, usually termed as One Health Approach. Their approach is to learn from insects and manage insects without affecting the ecosystem. ICIPE through their research lab built a software and data engineering pipeline for the data it generates through its operations. The pipeline recognizes the relevance of legacy data and thus provides means of achieving such data. As a matter of policy, ICIPE archives data for ten (10) years. Dr. Senagi opines that legacy data should be fused in new data and achieved when necessary. He concluded by providing a linkhttps://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/11/19/3196 - to a publication detailing the entire process used by ICIPE to build its pipeline.

The goal of the Tofi project was to create an intelligent water management system. Intended side effect was to boost the profitability of farmers. The project used soil-based sensors to measure humidity of soil not considering that farmers water their grounds daily This led to inaccurate data. Students put the second version of sensor close to a well, which produced a lot

Lightning Talk : Experiences learned with Project Tolbi - Prof. Ahmath Bamba Mbake

of false positives. Furthermore, the system only provided messages to farmers in one language ignoring 38 other languages. Researchers concluded that designing technology solutions for the field in the lab is not ideal and that being on the field gives you information required for successful implementation such as placing sensors above ground to avoid watering and tempering problems. Another lesson learnt is that a working solution in one ecosystem may fail in another.

Lightning Talk : Earth Observation Data for Sustainable Farming - Dr. Yves Hategekimana

IoT devices, drones, and satellites can be used to gather data about farming ecosystems. This data may be supplemented with third party data sources. Machine learning models can then be applied to this data to extract useful information. This information can help farmers make vital decisions on irrigation, types of crops to grow, monitor the health of crops, etc.

Panel : Boosting Resilient Agriculture and Data-Driven Practices

Joseph Abakunda,Chief Strategy Officer,Rwanda Space Agency, believes that governments play major roles from a regulatory perspective to setting the environment for all players to provide data and innovate. Government’s ability to collect, provision, and manage data is essential. Researchers and private sector players can use harvested data to predict catastrophes instead of waiting for them to happen. In data collection,Richard Ferguson, Vice Chancellor, Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture (RICA), opined that atypical data is as essential as typical data since it tells stories ignored by typical data. Vineet Singh, Senior Platform Architect, Digital Green stated that one of the concerns with collecting farm data is that some farmers consider such data as personal or proprietary data. Another is that collected data could be used for unintended purposes. And farmers are more likely to provide data if they are certain of getting tangible benefits along the way. Panelists advised that new systems should leverage existing infrastructure and systems such as cooperatives, and other agro-based projects in their environment.

Lightning Talk : AgriStack to Create Digital Agriculture Ecosystem in India - Mitul Thapliyal

IDEA stands for India digital ecosystem for Agriculture. Goals of IDEA included assisting the farmer with what to grow, when to grow/plant, and where to sell. Challenges identified with the current system include identifying acres of land owned by farmers, knowing exact service(s) provided by the farmers, and inability of farmers to ascertain market prices for their product. IDEA intends to build three registries -Farmer registry, Geo reference land/village registry, and

Land registry - to overcome identified challenges. The expected final product is a Unified Farmer Service Interface that connects government agencies, markets, inputs, and service providers.

Lightning Talk: Leveraging IoT to improve water efficiency in agriculture - Alfred Ntaganda (RISA):

Seventy percent (70%) of the Rwandan population is into agriculture and twenty-three percent (23%) of sub-Saharan Africa is in agriculture. Only simple equipment used in agriculture by most Rwandan farmers. BazaFarm is an IoT-based solution, developed by RISA, that collects real-time data about soil, water levels, etc. The system provides information to farmers that assist them to take appropriate actions at the right time in order to lower the cost of farming, and invest appropriately to increase productivity.

Conference Findings and Take-Aways

The conference was graced by stakeholders from across Africa, including government regulatory authorities, national central banks, telecommunications providers, healthcare providers, financial services companies, NGOs, and academia. This section summarizes the key take-aways from the speakers and audience:

- DPGs have been instrumental in transforming service delivery in multiple key sectors on the continent, especially during the pandemic and post-pandemic era. With an increasing shift to digitalization of public and private services, it is more imperative than ever to focus on protecting and securing the data of citizens and collaborations will be a necessity to this goal.

- DPGs must be trustworthy to a diverse range of use and users e.g. both urban and rural populations, educated and uneducated etc and must remain so at scale. Academic prototypes must start with this goal in mind. Standardization may be required to ensure privacy and security by design in solutions.

- There should be a balance between good service provision and privacy/security

- Collaboration between stakeholders from different disciplines i.e. technologists, regulations and academia, is the best way to foster growth for secure DPGs and DPIs.

- Role of academia is to give insight to industry and policymakers into what the future of well designed infrastructure and software could and should look like. They also offer a neutral avenue for the evaluation of developed systems

- On trust, solution designers should understand the security and privacy concerns of the users and ensure the developed solutions solve these concerns Users should also be educated on their privacy rights and cyber-safe practices in the digital realm There are three layers of trust promotion; fulfill promises made, users should consent on data collected and data shared and users should be able to withdraw consent at any point

- # How can we ensure trust by design in our systems? How can we ensure users continually trust our systems? How can we ensure trust with human mediated system interactions as in the case of the mobile money agent services.

- # Collaborative opportunities at the conference:

- A government can be an implementing partner of the Govstack platform and contribute to developing and reviewing the platform’s “building block” specifications. https://www.govstack.global/

- Governments should share data