GFCE Cyber Capacity Building Research Agenda Panel discussion at the Global Constellation Annual Conference 2022

In November 2022, the GFCE Research Committee participated in the Global Constellation of Capacity Centres Annual Conference and contributed to the program with a session on the GFCE’s research efforts and research agenda mechanism.

The Global Constellation is an initiative of the Global Cybersecurity Capacity Centre (GCSCC) which aims to collaborate and establish regional Partnerships with centres of excellence around the world. The Global Constellation is currently formed by the GCSCC together with the Oceania Cyber Security Centre (OCSC) and the Cybersecurity Capacity Centre for Southern Africa (C3SA). This way, the three centres of the Global Constellation work together towards driving regionally informed cybersecurity capacity research and leading the deployment of the CMM in their respective regions.

This year, the Global Constellation Conference was hosted by C3SA in Cape Town, on the 2-3 November under the theme: ‘Linking Cybersecurity Capacity Research to Development’. The event brought together a wide array of stakeholders working on cyber capacity building from government, academia and knowledge institutions.

The GFCE Research Committee had the opportunity to organize one of the panel discussions during the Conference, presenting the GFCE Global Cyber Capacity Building (CCB) Research Agenda 2022-2023, discussing the results achieved so far and their relevance for African stakeholders whilst interacting with the audience in order to explore potential ways of strengthening the Research Agenda’s impact, ownership, dissemination and areas of improvement vis-à-vis the African Academic Community.

The Research Agenda was established in 2020 with the support of the GFCE Research Committee and was developed for and by the GFCE Community, with the aim to help the cyber capacity building community to design and run more effective projects by identifying knowledge gaps and filling gaps through research. This was the first in person event in which the 2022-2023 CCB Research Agenda was presented since its publication during the GFCE Annual V-Meeting 2021.

The panel was composed by  Dr. Enrico Calandro (Chair – GFCE Research Committee), Jean-Robert Hountomey (AfricaCERT), Dr. Andrea Calderaro (GFCE Research Committee) and Kathleen Bei (GFCE Secretariat). Thanks to their contribution and especially to the insightful interventions from the audience, various takeaways could be drawn from the session: the need to raise awareness on the importance of further collaboration from academia and knowledge institutions in CCB efforts, the demand for a more active and vocal role of GFCE’s CCB Research activities and forums, both globally and regionally as well as a claim for more Partnerships with governmental and academic stakeholders. In addition to this, one of the most important remarks with  reference to the region, participants highlighted the need for an approach that considers how the Global South can address knowledge gaps identified and support the development of Global South intellectual property.