EU-LAC Digital Alliance: BELLA II: Securing equal access to Europe-Latin American and Caribbean infrastructure <p>In the framework of the EU-LAC Digital Alliance, the BELLA II proposal seeks to attain two goals: to expand the infrastructure, and to leverage dialogue, investments and social capital of Latin America and the Caribbean countries through newly established connectivity dialogues.</p><p>BELLA II aims to extend the BELLA infrastructure to as many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean as possible: beginning with Peru, four Mesoamerican countries (Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala) and if possible, the Caribbean (Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica) and other countries in South America that are not yet connected to the BELLA submarine cable (i.e. Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia). The connection of Peru has the highest priority in the project since it closes the connectivity loop in South America, providing a second route that increases the availability, resilience, and security of the service created with the first phase of BELLA. </p><p>To connect CA and CAR, we need to consider the economic, social, and infrastructure conditions of these countries. The lower-income countries lack connectivity infrastructure: for example, in Central America only a couple of providers cover almost all the market, creating a duopoly that leads to higher prices and less availability of connections. In the case of the Caribbean, the situation is even worse, since there is only one incumbent that monopolizes all the services in the region. Bolivia and Paraguay suffer the same condition. Additionally, the institutions, in general, are weaker, and universities and research centres have a lower level of productivity than other countries.</p><p>BELLA II is a regional proposal that aims to reduce the digital gap and support the development of the digital infrastructure to expand the digital ecosystem of science, technology, education, and innovation. However, to make it a reality, the political and financial support of governments, development banks, digital and ICT companies, and organizations in the region linked to these areas is needed. That is why this new phase of BELLA II intends to include all the stakeholders that could benefit from the investment through a methodology of open strategic dialogues. The dialogues will co-design, co- create, and co-develop better approaches to reduce the digital gap. They are also a means to engage in sectoral policy dialogues that can feed the higher-level policy dialogue conducted in the framework of the EU-LAC Digital Alliance.</p><p>In this second phase, the enterprises play a crucial role. During the BELLA Programme, the participation of the private enterprises focused just on the provision of connectivity services. To attain the goals of this project, we need to expand this role to guarantee the contributions for other aspects beyond connectivity. BELLA II will do so, working to enhance the use of the digital transformation technologies: 5G, Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, Blockchain, Internet of Things and Machine Learning.</p><p>BELLA II will contribute to, and support, other initiatives such as Copernicus and the EU-LAC Digital Aaccelerator or the cybersecurity centre in the Dominican Republic, while attracting additional investments that can help to extend the infrastructure to provide services to many other sectors besides the academic. </p>