International Cyber Capacity Building Global Trends and Scenarios

The international development community has been using the concept of "capacity building" since the 1990s (Zamfir 2017, 2) and the 2003 and 2005 World Summit on the Information Society called for cyber capacity building to support development. However, the field has, with a few exceptions, evolved outside of the development realm.

The "niche" nature of cybersecurity in the global policy agenda has negatively impacted the integration of cyber capacity building into the development agenda, in part due to the impression that cyber issues are linked to national security and therefore would largely fall outside the scope of official development assistance. However, even the recognition of ICT as a broad enabler of development, affecting every Sustainable Development Goal, has only been widely recognized within the development community in the past decade (United Nations, General Assembly 2015). Therefore, it is perhaps unsurprising that technical cyber sub-issues are yet to be mainstreamed into development thinking.

Some of the key actors who have tried to break through the glass wall between cyber capacity building and development include the EU, ITU, Japan, Norway, the World Bank, UK, and US. The EU was one of the first donors to systematically use its development cooperation funds to finance cyber capacity building projects. This funding came from pre-accession and partnership financing instruments and then consolidated as a priority to "utilize different EU aid instruments for cybersecurity capacity building" in the 2013 Cybersecurity Strategy (European Union 2013). The evolution of the EU's policy narrative since 2013 has focused upon addressing cybersecurity as a governance issue and cybercrime as a criminal justice reform priority, both closely linked to the Sustainable Development Goals (Council of the European Union 2015; 2018). The ITU oversaw the drafting of a Global Cybersecurity Agenda to follow up the WSIS outcomes (International Telecommunication Union 2008, 104-11) and subsequently its Telecommunication Development Sector (ITU-D) was set as an objective to "build human and institutional capacity, provide data and statistics, promote digital inclusion and provide concentrated assistance to countries in special need" (International Telecommunication Union (ITU) 2014, 32). The World Bank, UK, and US have all created funds or programs that intentionally combine digital development and cyber capacity building using overseas development assistance.

These examples and the others we found demonstrate a slow but steady trajectory in commecting development funding with cyber capacity building. The pace could accelerate with the pivot towards digital development as a new priority that requires the integration of cyber security.

Link to full report: International Cyber Capacity Building Global Trends and Scenarios