EU international digital policy in action: The EU-Kenya partnership

The EU and its member states launched the International Digital Strategy in June 2025: aiming to link digital diplomacy, trade, technical support, cooperation tools and investments under the Global Gateway strategy, now branded as the ‘EU tech business offer.’ Yet, there is a need to focus on how a strategic and integrated international digital policy can be implemented in practice, building on lessons from existing EU digital partnerships.

Using Kenya as a case study, we argue that if the EU wants to become a strategic and valued partner, it will need to continue to strengthen political and policy dialogue to ensure joint ownership, scale up the speed and level of financing for digital infrastructure and innovation ecosystems and increase the focus on digital trade and digitally enabled trade in services. 

Kenya is a digital leader in Africa, with a thriving digital ecosystem and a strong emphasis on digital transformation in its wider economic development strategy. The partnership with Kenya demonstrates how the EU and member states – as Team Europe – have scaled up engagement, bringing together technical support, investments in innovation and skills, mainstreaming of digital across other policy areas, and digital trade. However, the partnership is hampered by slow strategic infrastructure investment and a complex European financing landscape (e.g. challenges in deploying EFSD+ guarantees).