Ethiopia Digital Foundations Project

The Project Development Objective (PDO) for the Ethiopia Digital Foundations Project is to increase the inclusiveness and affordability of digital services and digital job creation in Ethiopia. The Ethiopia Digital Foundations Project is intended to lay the building blocks to develop Ethiopia’s digital economy. Liberalization and the introduction of competition in the telecom sector, coupled with improved private management of the incumbent, has proven to deliver consistent results for improved access and affordability across the world. Building on this premise, this project will support the necessary steps to introduce market competition, private sector participation, foreign investment and independent sector regulation (component 1). The project will also help the country expand and strengthen its basic digital infrastructure, especially the fiber network and mobile broadband, towards achieving the African Union goal of universal affordable and quality broadband access by 2030 (component 2), a pre-condition to being able to leverage digital technologies for growth in the various sectors of the economy. A special area of focus will be enhancing broadband services to government and better serving universities and government offices in provincial areas, using an MFD approach, whereby the private sector takes the lead on investment. Supporting a robust cybersecurity framework to protect these investments from attacks and breaches will be critical. Finally, the country can generate opportunities for new jobs it needs through its investments and reforms in digital transformation; this will require creating an ecosystem in which new digital start-ups can thrive (component 3). There is also a need to ensure that offline citizens benefit from the push towards the digital economy. This is addressed through the design of the matching grants program that seeks to serve both online and offline businesses (also under component 3). Ultimately, the project aims at enabling its...