Digital Economic Development in Africa

The Einstein Center Digital Future (ECDF) and Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) have successfully kicked off a research joint project in the context of establishing digital centers in Tunisia. The focus of researchers’ activities will be on the investigation of the local platform economy as well as exploring opportunities for job creation in the Tunisian and North African industrial and administrative sectors. The overarching project sponsor is the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) in the course of its “Special Initiative on Training and Job Creation” for sustainable growth and employment in Africa.

The project is delivered by an interdisciplinary team of experienced researchers and project managers, combining expertise from TU Berlin’s chair of Trust in Digital Services and HU Berlin’s Organizational Economics and Future of Workled by ECDF professors Prof. Dr. Timm Teubner and Prof. Dr. Anastasia Danilov. This project underlines ECDF’s cross-disciplinary research approach in private-public partnerships. The team has fully been on-boarded in July 2020 and a set of first focus topics has already been defined in close cooperation with GIZ stakeholders – among them the exploration of the status quo of the local platform economy and the mapping of relevant digital skills in the Tunisian labor market.

The first phase of the project is scheduled over a two year period until 2022 and the involved parties plan to report in regular updates on the project progress, for instance, in the form of (virtual) information events in Berlin and Tunisia, a white paper series, and a research blog. More information will be made available in due time.