CTO/05
2026
On partnership, the CTO's convening role is the answer to the coordination failure. This convening role is at the heart of CTO’s Connectivity, Collaboration and Partnership (CCP) vision. A standing Commonwealth mechanism that lets fragmented national efforts pool their bargaining power, share what works, and set realistic targets together would do more than any single national programme. This is the natural Commonwealth contribution to the Global Digital Divide Leadership Coordination Forum (GDDLCF) that the connectivity field badly needs. Leonard and Dineil were right that partnership amplifies impact. The argument here simply adds that partnership has a specific job to do, which is to fix the coordination failure that no member state can solve on its own, and to do it on the basis of honest numbers and reachable targets on connectivity and meaningful connectivity The CCP vision does not need replacing. It needs the harder arithmetic underneath it. Get the measurement right, accept that most of the work is still to come, and the Commonwealth can lead in closing a meaningful connectivity gap that is wider than the official figures admit.
About the author Professor H Sama Nwana is a managing partner at Cenerva, a Visiting Professor at the University of Strathclyde, and a former Group Director at Ofcom UK. Born in Cameroon, he has advised VCs, PE Firms, MDBs[1], governments, regulators and global institutions on digital inclusion across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Middle East for more than fifteen years. He is the author of The Connectivity Crisis: Half the World Left Behind (Strathclyde Academic Media, 2025), which sets out practical strategies to connect the 2.2 billion people still offline and to meaningfully connect 2 billion more. Reference Nwana (2025), The Connectivity Crisis – Half the World Left Behind – Expert insights for global institutions and developing nations committed to achieving universal digital inclusion - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Connectivity- Crisis-Half-World-Behind/dp/1739588649/
[1] Venture Capitalists, Private Equity & Multilateral Development Banks
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