New WAICTANet–Cenerva UK Strategic Partnership to Build Digital Regulatory Excellence in the Mano River Region
The West Africa ICT Action Network (WAICTANet), a regional multi-stakeholder platform advancing inclusive digital transformation across West Africa, and Cenerva, a specialist digital regulatory-policy consultancy headquartered in the UK with global training credentials, have formally entered into a strategic partnership to strengthen regulatory capacity and digital-skills development across the Mano River Union (MRU) region, comprising Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Côte d’Ivoire.
This partnership responds to the urgent need for dynamic regulatory institutions, market-aware policy frameworks, and skilled professionals capable of steering the region’s rapidly evolving digital economy. By combining Cenerva’s globally recognized expertise in regulatory training and advisory services with WAICTANet’s strong local presence, convening power, and youth-focused approach, the initiative aims to deliver practical, results-driven impact rooted in the realities of the MRU region.
The programme’s first-year roadmap is built around four integrated components designed to accelerate regulatory capacity and digital-governance readiness. The MRU Regulatory Masterclasses (TRMC-MRU)—adapted from Cenerva’s world-renowned Telecoms Regulatory Masterclass—will combine virtual learning, in-country workshops, and certification pathways covering telecom and digital-economy regulation, spectrum and numbering strategy, competition and consumer protection, emerging technology governance (including cloud services, platforms, and fintech), and data-governance and inclusion readiness. With a proven record of training more than 6,500 professionals across over 140 countries, Cenerva’s expertise will ensure world-class content contextualized to local regulatory realities.
Complementing the masterclasses, Hands-On Labs and Policy Sprints will create practical spaces for regulators and operators to model spectrum and numbering strategies using regional data. These will be coupled with co-designed policy-sprint sessions involving regulators, youth networks, and civil-society actors to generate actionable policy guidelines on issues such as fair competition, digital inclusion, and innovation-friendly regulation. A Youth Scholarships and Mentorship stream, led by WAICTANet, will prioritize participation from women and rural communities, offering mentorship, alumni networking, and structured career pathways into regulatory, policy, and digital-industry roles.
In addition, the Regional Advisory and Institutional Strengthening component will provide targeted technical assistance to MRU governments and regulators on cross-border challenges including roaming, spectrum harmonization, digital-market oversight, and data-governance readiness—ensuring long-term institutional capacity and policy coherence across borders.
A formal Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two institutions establishes a Joint Steering Committee (JSC) co-chaired by WAICTANet and Cenerva, with national focal points appointed in each MRU country. Both partners commit to transparent resource allocation, inclusive participant selection, and a sustainability plan that incorporates a train-the-trainer model, cost-sharing mechanisms, and continued regional collaboration. Cenerva will contribute its established curricula and global faculty, while WAICTANet will leverage its policy expertise, youth-engagement platforms, and local operational capacity to ensure effective regional delivery.
The programme targets the training of at least 120 regulators and policymakers in its first year, laying a strong foundation for enhanced regional digital-governance capacity. It will prioritize diversity and inclusion, ensuring that at least 40% of participants are women and 30% are youth under 30, to foster gender balance and empower the next generation of digital-policy leaders. The initiative will also produce four draft policy guidelines for MRU regulators—focusing on spectrum management, numbering frameworks, and digital-market governance—to serve as actionable outputs influencing both national and regional policies. To guarantee sustainability and continuous learning, the partnership will establish a regional alumni network and conduct a tracer survey 12 months after training completion to evaluate participants’ career progression, institutional uptake of skills, and overall professional impact.
As the MRU region experiences unprecedented digital transformation—marked by surging mobile connectivity, the expansion of digital platforms, and new cross-border markets—governments face emerging challenges related to data flows, inclusion, cybersecurity, and fintech innovation. Strengthening regulatory institutions and building a skilled professional base are critical to ensuring sustainable investment, fair competition, user protection, and inclusive innovation. By linking local insight with global best practice, the partnership between WAICTANet and Cenerva represents a pivotal step toward accelerating the region’s journey from knowledge to policy to measurable impact.
