Cyber law and cyber
security in support of
economic development
Cécile Barayre-El Shami
Programme Manager, E-Commerce and Law Reform
ICT Analysis Section, UNCTAD
cecile.barayre@unctad.org
Harmonizing cyberlaws in ECOWAS, Accra, 18-21 March 2014
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Why cybersecurity matters?
Cyberattacks have the potential to destabilize on a global scale.
Cybersecurity must therefore be a matter of global concern. We need to
work together to bolster confidence in our networks, which are central
to international commerce and governance.
We need to strengthen national legislation … push for international
frameworks for collaboration … and adopt the necessary measures to
detect and defuse cyber threats.
Mr. Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General,
Seoul Conference on Cyberspace, Seoul, Republic of
Korea, October 2013
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Scope for more online activities thanks
to improved ICT connectivity
 Increased capacity of submarine fibre-optic cables
connecting developing countries to cyberspace
 18% Internet users in Africa
Widespread adoption of mobile devices
 Nearly as many SIM cards as people
 Smartphone sales surging
 63.5% mobile-cellular subscriptions in Africa
 Mobile broadband in Africa
• Mobile-broadband subscriptions: 10.9 percent
• Fixed (wired)-broadband subscriptions: 0.3 percent
Increased use of cloud computing – security and privacy
implications of processing personal data remotely
 Webmail and social networks, business applications and
G-cloud
E-government initiatives
Sources: ITU, GSMA, UNCTAD (2014)
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New forms of mobile use
Text messaging (SMS)
Mobile money
 Expanding fastest in low-income countries: huge opportunity to improve
financial inclusion with 2.5 billion unbanked in lower to middle income
countries
 More than 110 deployments in Africa out of 225 (March 2014); ECOWAS
represents 40 percent
Benefits for micro and small enterprises
• Faster and cheaper basic money transfers and payment
functions
• Merchant payments
• Mobile solutions to international remittances (still nascent)
• Lower transaction costs for micro-finance (still nascent)
• Mobile micro-insurance (still nascent)
 Exponential growth of mobile transactions
 Eg: In Kenya, frauds involving mobile banking are amongst the fastest
growing cybercrime category
Sources: UNCTAD, GSMA, ITU, national data, Gartner, J.M. Ledgard.
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Rise of social media
Facebook users in Africa growing fast
 2013 (March): 50 million; 7% average penetration
Largest number of users in Egypt, South Africa and Nigeria
Cost-effective alternative to traditional websites
Mobile version of Facebook particularly popular
 Used by >75% of users in Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria
and South Africa
 Requires less bandwidth
Twitter
 Most tweets sent from South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt and
Morocco.
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Sources: Socialbaker, UNCTAD, www.jeffbullas.com.
Signs of rapid growth of e-commerce in
developing countries
B2C e-commerce sales in 2012: $1 trillion
China, India and Indonesia expected to grow fastest in 2013
 China
 E-commerce has grown by 120% a year since 2003
 Surpassed the US in 2013 as largest e-commerce market
 Requested UNCTAD to review its e-commerce legislation (2014)
Latin America: from $1.6 billion to $43 billion in past decade
 Brazil accounts for largest market share (59%)
Middle East and Africa: share in global e-commerce expected
to rise from 1.6% to 3.5% by 2016
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Sources: Economist, Morgan Stanley, eMarketer
Issues to address: a long list
 Cybersecurity is multi-dimensional and complex
 Sovereignty, freedom of expression and privacy
 No international framework and cooperation to address
cybersecurity
 Strenghten the infrastructure and e-payment systems
 Lack of capacity:
 Policy and law makers preparing and enforcing laws
 Technical skills (security systems and CERTs)
 Enforcement law bodies
 Differences among countries
 Legislation, capacity, resources
 Regional agreements/frameworks
 Need for more coordinated approaches among the various
actors providing assistance
 Need to anchor ICT, including cybersecurity issues in the post2015 MDGs
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UNCTAD's work on cyberlaw
harmonization
 Provide technical assistance to more than 40 countries in the
preparation of an enabling legal and regulatory environment
for e-commerce
 In Africa: EAC and ECOWAS, Ethiopia
1. Raise awareness and build capacity of policy and law makers,
including parliamentarians
 Online and face-to-face training course on the “Legal Aspects of
E-commerce” : legal validity of e-transaction, consumer
protection, taxation, security, privacy, IPRs, content regulation
2. Reviews of national laws and regional agreements
3. Preparation of regionally harmonized legal frameworks
 Programme funded by Finland
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UNCTAD's cybersecurity assistance in
ECOWAS
 Project started in 2013 in cooperation with the ECOWAS Commission
 To support the implementation at the national level of existing legal
frameworks on e-transactions (Supplementary Act A/SA.2/01/10),
cybercrime (Directive 1/08/11) and personal data protection (Supplementary
Act A/SA.1/01/10)
 To review e-commerce law harmonization
 Partners: AU, UNCITRAL, ITU
 Building capacity of policy and law makers
 220 trained through distance learning (Ocotber 2013)
 Two regional workshops (Dakar, February 2014; Accra, March, 2014)
 New online course on the Legal Aspects of E-Commerce in October 2014
 Review on cyberlaw harmonization - recommendations to further cyberlaw
harmonization
"If we want to promote e-commerce in the region, we must raise consumer confidence
in computer security and electronic transactions" - Dr. Raphael Koffi, Principal
Programme Officer and Head of Telecommunication/ICT Division, ECOWAS Commission
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http://unctad.org/ICT4D
Cecile.barayre@unctad.org
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Thank you for your attention!