Enrico Calandro Chair of the GFCE Research Committee

Dr Enrico Calandro is the Co-Director of the Cybersecurity Capacity Centre for Southern Africa at the University of Cape Town and a Senior Research Associate at Research ICT Africa.

Over the last ten years, he has been exploring the relationship between digitalisation and development with a focus on digital inequalities. His targeted and locally-relevant research has aimed at shaping cyber policy processes and debates and at crafting evidence-based and informed capacity-building initiatives in the field of cyber policy. He has worked as an advisor for the e-Parliament programme of the SADC Parliamentary Forum and more recently as an expert consultant on cross border data flow for the UNDP Global Centre for Technology, Innovation, and Sustainable Development.

In June 2018, Enrico was appointed as a Member of the Advisory Board of the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise, and in June 2020, he was appointed as the Chairperson of the GFCE Research Committee. Since January 2020, he is a Member of the Technical Advisory Board of the Constellation of Cyber Centres led by the Global Cybersecurity Capacity Centre at the University of Oxford. Enrico is a recipient of the Open Technology Fund fellowship on Information controls, the Amy Mahan scholarship award for the advancement of ICT policy in Africa, and the UNDESA fellowship for international cooperation. He holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration, Programme on managing infrastructure reform and regulation, from the Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town.