Central African Republic signs five-year deal with Moscow’s HSE University on e-government 🇨🇫💻

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The Central African Republic is about to train its civil servants in digital governance, with Russian backing. On 9 October, the country’s Ministry of Digital Economy, Posts and Telecommunications signed a five-year, renewable cooperation agreement with Moscow’s National Research University Higher School of Economics, better known as HSE University. The signing took place on the sidelines of the second Global Digital Forum, held in the Russian capital from 8 to 10 October.

A ranking that demands an answer 📉

In 2024, the United Nations’ E-Government Development Index (EGDI), which looks at online public services, telecom infrastructure and human capital, ranked the Central African Republic 193rd out of 193 countries. In other words, dead last in the world for digital public administration. A neighbor of Cameroon and, like it, a member of CEMAC (the Central African Economic and Monetary Community), the country is betting on training its public officials to turn that around, a link no digital overhaul of public services can do without.

A program already in place 🌍

The E-Governance Knowledge Sharing Program for Africa, run by HSE University’s Centre for African Studies, has existed since 2022. According to the Central African ministry’s statement, the country is now officially joining it. The program promotes exchanges of experience between Russian and African institutions on designing and rolling out e-governance solutions. Skills are widely seen as a bottleneck: in a February 2024 report, the OECD argued that governments should invest proactively in skills, training and education to get the most out of digital technologies.

What the cooperation covers 🔧

According to information relayed by the press from the ministry’s statement, the deal is meant to train Central African civil servants in e-governance. The exchanges reportedly cover public policy, regulatory frameworks, and the digital technologies and platforms used by administrations. The stated goal is to make it easier to move administrative procedures online and improve how public services run. But the content of the training, its timeline and the number of officials involved have not been detailed so far. The OECD’s recommendations offer a useful yardstick for tracking the rollout: identify the skills officials actually need, combine formal training with informal learning, then measure results.

A matter of skills as much as technology 🚀

Beyond the signing ceremony, the challenge is to give public servants the skills to use digital tools and modernize the services citizens get. Training alone won’t be enough, though. It addresses human capital, just one of the UN index’s three pillars, which also counts telecom infrastructure and online services.

So, is training its civil servants with Russian backing the right lever for the Central African Republic to close its digital gap? Tell us in the comments.