The EU’s digital Global Gateway requires a new type of partnership

When the EU launched its Global Gateway strategy in 2021, it had its eyes on China. China’s Belt and Road initiative (BRI) has now covered large areas of the Global South in Chinese-built infrastructure – including roads, ports, energy plants and mobile telecommunication networks. Digital infrastructure has been a part of Europe’s answer to the BRI (as well as China’s Digital Silk Road) since its inception. The global pandemic had just underscored the central role of the internet and mobile communication for global connectivity, while also exposing the risk of disruption, or even sabotage, if such infrastructure was controlled by a ‘systemic rival’, as China was labelled by the EU. These concerns were shared by China’s main strategic rival, the US, and other liberal democracies.

As the EU hosts its second Global Gateway Forum this week (after the first in 2023), the motivations have not changed but the geopolitical environment for the EU has become more complex. On the eve of the Global Gateway launch in Brussels in 2021, the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Washington hosted a high-level virtual roundtable, which included representatives from European institutions and the White House. The Biden administration had just proposed its own infrastructure initiative, which was later taken up by the G7 as the ‘Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment’. Cooperation between these initiatives was limited in practice, but there was general agreement on the goal of providing alternatives to Chinese technology investments that are both sustainable and democratic.

Transatlantic harmony is a thing of the past, and the ‘gloves are off’, especially on digital policy, as Trump rails against EU regulation. A roundtable like the one in 2021 is unthinkable today. The pursuit of global democracy is no longer on the US agenda, neither is the green transition, and development aid has been all but erased. Transatlantic cooperation on connectivity may continue at a limited technical level, but most of what is left on the US side is competition with China and efforts to expand the global market share of US companies.

As the EU finds itself squeezed between powerful foreign tech monopolies, the dominant debate in Brussels in 2025 is about how to use industrial policy to (re)gain Europe’s digital sovereignty. One popular concept is the Eurostack, in which Europe controls the core layers of its technological infrastructure, from fibre-optic cables, satellites and mobile networks to data centres and devices all the way to digital public services.

At the same time, as development budgets are being cut in European capitals to finance defence spending in the face of Russia’s growing threat, the EU is seeking to build new types of partnership with the Global South.

The time could be ripe for this, as many of the EU’s partners are also eager to assume greater agency, including over their digital transformations. it presents an opportunity to move from a development logic to a cooperation based on mutual interests – without eschewing sustainable development goals and human-centric values – and from data protection to inclusion and participation, which are at the core of true and lasting sovereignty. An honest and realistic ‘EU tech business offer’, which the EU sets out to develop in its new International Digital Strategy, should include three elements. First, even if the China threat narrative is not shared by the Global South, most partners are keen to carve out their autonomy amidst great power competition. Second, the EU can develop public–private packages, in which the private sector offers tech solutions and the public sector provides supporting elements that contribute to the public good. Finally, resilient digital infrastructures need to be created locally. The EU and European companies can be partners in co-developing such local solutions, potentially even generating innovations that can be transferred.

Diversification

The EU’s digital engagement in the Global South will not break the global dependence on Chinese mobile networks and US cloud services. Replacing Chinese technology in partner countries’ tech stacks is currently an unrealistic objective, given that not even Germany has been able (or willing) to purge Huawei from its 5G networks. Although the EU has been successful in exporting its approach to data protection and digital regulation (the ‘Brussels effect’) to parts of the world, it is also clear that China’s authoritarian model of data localization, based on centralized state control, is attractive for a number of partner states. Also, when it comes to procurement, European companies often state that they find it difficult to compete on price.

In light of many countries’ quest for greater autonomy, the EU’s selling point can be that a safer world is one in which not all subsea cables, mobile networks and data centres are built by Chinese or US companies, and in which Starlink is not the only game in the village for rural satellite connectivity. The Medusa cable across the Mediterranean, which involves a consortium of EU companies, adds an alternative gateway between Europe and North Africa, and the presence of Nokia and Ericsson in Africa is a counterweight to Huawei and ZTE in Africa’s 5G market.

Rather than joining the game to monopolize other markets, Europe can seek to engage in a way that strengthens partners’ autonomy. One such effort is taking shape in Central Asia, a region heavily dependent on Chinese technology and Russian governance. Luxembourg-based SES, which produces communications satellite technology, has procured €60 million in grant and loan financing from the EU and the European Investment Bank to provide internet to remote parts of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Public–private packages

Since European companies can rarely compete on price, public support and package solutions are needed for the EU’s more secure and sustainable ‘tech business offer’, as the EU’s new International Digital Strategy terms it. Chinese vendors are often praised for offering such one-stop solutions. Chinese companies – accompanied by representatives from the state’s investment banks and export financing agencies – can offer comprehensive packages that include technical maintenance, skills and financing arrangements. The downside of such an offer to the customer is the risk of vendor lock-in to one provider. Already, a large cohort of software engineers in Africa are licensed to work exclusively with Huawei technology.

European public and private sectors cannot make such integrated offers but working together they can become visible as ‘Team Europe’. The EU and member states can provide ‘soft elements’ such as training and education for digital skills and literacy, programmes for societal inclusion, or policy support for the governance of new technologies. These offers have become even more important now that the United States has left the field by shutting down its development agency USAID, leaving vendor-neutral capacity-building to the EU and a few other likeminded governments, as well as to private foundations. The SES deal in Central Asia was announced as part of a package through which the European Commission and several member states offer training on cybersecurity policies and skills, as well as support for building a local space industry.

Another example is the Copernicus project in the Philippines (CopPhil), which is led by the European Space Agency. Through a ground-based facility, a so-called ‘mirror site’, Filipino authorities and universities gain access to the data from the EU’s earth observation satellite, which is an invaluable resource for managing natural disaster risks, but also for monitoring coastal biodiversity or soil conditions for agriculture. CopPhil preceded the launch of Global Gateway but was quickly branded as one of its flagship projects. Through a Digital Economy Package, the EU provides policy and regulatory support for closing gaps in the 5G network, which currently prevent the efficient flow and use of Copernicus data.

This example charts a strategic way out of the previous digital development logic, in which the soft elements were often in place, but the hard elements – the physical infrastructure or technology – were missing. Isolated governance and skills training may have generated goodwill among groups of regulators or village elders, but the European contribution went unnoticed by the broader public. Following this new logic, which has yet to be road-tested, the private sector delivers the technology, while the public sector strives to ensure that it serves the public good. Both elements need to be connected by the availability of finance, the lack of which has been the underlying weakness of the EU’s digital cooperation. Efforts are underway to make it easier to procure EU funding and guarantees for digital cooperation projects and to bring export promotion agencies into an area that was previously left to development banks. One new instrument is a Digital Investment Facility, which supports African data infrastructure projects in accessing multilateral financing.

Local co-creation

The EU also needs to acknowledge that true digital autonomy for partners is not achieved by the allocation of export credits to European companies. Local partnerships are crucial. Co-creation has become a buzzword in the Brussels digital cooperation bubble as it is the key to the discussion about ‘Digital Public Infrastructure’ (DPI), the foundational systems – commonly defined as digital identity, payment and data exchange – which provide the rails for services from e-government to health or education. DPI is one area where co-creation is possible, as several Global South countries are global leaders in building such systems. India is exporting its DPI model to other regions, Brazil has an impressive success story, and the Kenyan company M-Pesa had rolled out mobile money in Africa before many Europeans knew what a QR code was.

This brings opportunities for European providers to collaborate, especially if they can offer secure, interoperable and open-source solutions, such as the developers of Estonia’s XRoad data exchange platform. The EU’s experience with cross-national digital ID (eIDAS) is also valuable for Africa, which has similar regional and continental ambitions.

Given that many emerging markets were early adopters of digital technologies, co-creating localized services brings opportunities for mutual learning. But European bureaucracies, stuck in the old development logic, often lack the channels for ‘reverse innovation’, in which products or services developed in emerging markets are adopted in advanced economies. Greater flexibility would be needed in a new era of more pragmatic and more equal partnerships.

The EU needs to chart a way to digital autonomy jointly with partner states, even as it is catching up on digital innovation at home. This dual approach would also benefit the Global Gateway. Creating a well-coordinated and transparent ‘stack’ of smartly integrated public–private activities and financing instruments by the Commission and member states can make up a convincing European tech offer to partners in the Global South.