The government of Djibouti plans to update its law on cybersecurity to better match its vision of making Information and Communication Technologies -ICT- a mainstay of the country’s economic growth.
Under this strategy, the government wants to get a number of instruments to strengthen the protection of IT systems and people’s personal data. A roadmap of the process was established on August 29 during a meeting initiated by the ministry of home affairs.
The meeting was also attended by senior officials of the ministry of justice, international experts, and representatives of the National Agency for State Information Systems (ANSIE), as well as lawyers and officers of the judicial police and the national gendarmerie.
“For any nation, this (cybersecurity, ed) is an issue of national sovereignty. Because the protection of the State's information systems, the continuity of the functioning of institutions and infrastructures vital for the country's socio-economic activities, the protection of companies and citizens are entirely threatened by the problem of cybercrime,” the interior minister, Moumin Ahmed Cheick, explained.
The Djiboutian government, which wants to make the small nation a continental telecommunications hub, is aware that any negligence whatsoever could ruin all its strategic investments. According to the World Bank, Djibouti is Africa’s fourth most connected country with eight submarine optical fiber cables.