Sovereign by Design Playbook Launched to Strengthen Africa’s Data Security Governance, Cyber Resilience

Africa has launched its most comprehensive and operationally focused data-security governance guide: Sovereign by Design: Advancing Africa’s Data Security Governance and Cyber Resilience. The Playbook was officially unveiled at the 2025 FIRST and AfricaCERT Symposium in Mauritius, attended by incident-response leaders, policymakers, and digital-governance practitioners from across Africa, the Arab region, and the wider Global South.

Developed through a continent-wide collaboration, the Playbook translates major African Union frameworks, the AU Digital Transformation Strategy, the AU Malabo Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection, and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Data Protocol, into practical tools and a clear 0–36-month implementation roadmap. It includes templates, maturity models, breach-notification drills, classification matrices, and guidance on sovereign cloud, digital public infrastructure, and trusted cross-border data flows.

The initiative reflects the collective expertise of the African Union Cybersecurity Experts Group (AUCSEG), the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation – Computer Emergency Response Team (OIC-CERT), the Network of African Data Protection Authorities (NADPA/RAPDP), and the Institute of Information Protection and Privacy (IIPP) Ltd/GTE.

Huawei and other partners provided technical support, alongside inputs from governments, industry leaders, academics, and civil-society organisations.

The Playbook addresses five structural tensions shaping Africa’s digital trajectory: reactive laws, foreign-controlled infrastructure, rapid growth without rights, national laws misaligned with cross-border realities, and policy ambitions that outpace institutional capacity. It also urges governments to anticipate emerging risks, including AI-driven impersonation, deepfake governance attacks, biometric harvesting, supply-chain vulnerabilities, autonomous malware, and quantum-enabled decryption.

Speaking at the launch, Mr. Abdul-Hakeem Ajijola, Chair of AUCSEG, emphasised that the Playbook is designed for Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs), Security Operations Centres (SOCs), regulators, and operators who require operational clarity to protect nations.

The call to action is: Adopt the Playbook; Adapt it to national and sectoral contexts; Co-create the next editions with real-world insights.

Accordibg to Ajijola, “If you want to go far, go together. This Playbook helps Africa and the Global South move forward, securely, confidently, and sovereign by design.”