You’ll have seen, in social media, that the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) announced a partnership with FIRST last week.

This is the result of a great deal of work and is something we (FIRST) should be very proud of.

We have been working with the FCDO for a number of months, applying for a grant that would enable us to execute on our vision and mission statements. This was announced at the Global Conference on Cyber Capacity Building in Accra, Ghana last week.

At the same event we endorsed and signed the ‘Accra Call” - https://gc3b.org/the-accra-call-for-cyber-resilient-development/.

The Accra Call aims to stimulate global action to elevate cyber resilience across international and national development agendas as well as promote cyber capacity building that supports broader development goals, effectively serving the needs and priorities of developing countries.

I've attached the draft of the speech I gave at the plenary session after this was announced - Plenary Address.

I'm very excited about this. It'll be a step-change in our ability to both serve the existing teams in Africa but to increase the number of teams. We presently have teams in 16 African countries - out of 54. Our vision is a team in every country globally. Clearly we need to work on this.

This partnership is very much due to the work of Klée Aiken - our Director of Community & Capacity Building. We are working to build similar partnerships in other regions.

For information on the role and how to apply please see Position description

Best

Chris

This newsletter was made possible by the contributions of Team members, Liaisons, FIRST staff, and Board members: Chris Gibson.