Central America and the European Union Come Together in Costa Rica to Strengthen Connectivity and Cybersecurity

5G technology makes it possible to transmit these images in real time, opening up new possibilities for protecting infrastructures and improving emergency response. The group followed the demonstration with the fascination inspired by a new toy. Once the drone landed, there was also a chance to see another one: a fixed-wing, long-range drone capable of traveling some 200 kilometers, designed for long-distance environmental and territorial monitoring.

That was how the day began, with a demonstration of the 5G Testbed, which, with the support of the European Union, uses a Nokia NDAC system to create a private network where more than ten pilot projects are currently underway, driven by Costa Rican small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).The program includes projects such as geophysical monitoring of volcanoes using the Internet of Things, smart bus stops, and remote inspection systems, among others.

"The Testbed is very special and important because it gives us a pathway for developing small-scale prototypes and then scaling them up", explained Patricia Rojas Figueredo, General Manager, Promoter of Innovation and Research of Costa Rica. "It is a technology facilitator, a facilitator that allows companies to dare to dream and experiment."

Alejandro Herrera, Deputy Secretary of the Regional Technical Commission for Telecommunications (COMTELCA), agreed: "These are sometimes companies that normally do not have access to these emerging technologies, and they are given the opportunity to come in and carry out their own testing and projects.”

The technical exchange visit, which brought together representatives of Central American governments, the European Union, the regional organizations SICA and COMTELCA, as well as members of the technical community, academia, and the private sector, aimed to strengthen cooperation between Central America and Europe on cybersecurity and secure connectivity through the regional exchange of experiences and good practices, as well as by learning about two of Costa Rica’s most recent technological initiatives. The meeting took place within the framework of the European Union-Latin America and the Caribbean (EU-LAC)-Digital Alliance, a bi-regional mechanism that promotes digital cooperation between both regions.

The second stop was the Security Operations Center of the Ministry of Science, Innovation, Technology and Telecommunications (MICITT), which provides cybersecurity and secure connectivity support to Costa Rican public institutions. The team has grown from just three people to more than twenty, a direct result of the lessons learned from the ransomware attack in 2022 that hit institutions such as the Ministry of Finance and the Costa Rican Social Security Fund (CCSS). As part of this process, the European Union has supported the Center with specialized equipment to enhance its capabilities.

Vice Minister of Telecommunications Alonso Zeledón Carazo put the broader challenge into perspective, one that Costa Rica shares with the rest of the region and Europe: "Both the European Union and Central America face a common challenge: ensuring that digital transformation is not only inclusive, but also secure and resilient." He added a point that, for many of those attending the event, captured the spirit of the meeting: “Cyber threats do not recognize borders, so we need to learn to work together in a more coordinated way.” 

For José Arias, Nokia’s Senior Director of Geopolitics and Government Affairs for Latin America, cybersecurity concepts are still understood differently across the region, which can pose a challenge to developing more closely aligned public policies. Against this backdrop, Arias identified the most valuable aspect of the exercise as seeing firsthand how important these spaces are for the countries across the region and for the industry, both as a way to receive information and to share it.

The region’s interest in the Costa Rican model comes at a time when 5G deployment is at different stages across Central America.A 5G deployment maturity map presented during the visit showed Costa Rica and El Salvador with active commercial deployments; Guatemala and Panama at an intermediate stage; and Honduras, Nicaragua, and Belize with no date or roadmap yet for the commercial launch of the technology. In this regard, Willy Carvajal, Regional Project Officer for Digitalization, Space and Innovation at the Delegation of the European Union in Costa Rica, highlighted a point that several participants described as a genuine novelty: direct dialogue between the public and private sectors. “It is one of the first times we have had this kind of interaction, and it has been truly wonderful,” he said, emphasizing that the exchange was not commercial, but rather strategic, aimed at strengthening the capacities of countries to respond to cyberattacks.

By the end of the day, what became clear, in the words of several participants, was that training must continue, that technical cooperation between countries needs to deepen, and that these exchanges—between governments, between the public and private sectors, and between Central America and its counterparts in South America and Europe—need to take place more frequently. As Renate Stangl, Acting Head of Business at the Delegation of the European Union in Costa Rica, put it, the challenge now is to turn political dialogue into action: “I think the time is now ripe to translate all of this into concrete action.”

The visit was organized by the Delegation of the European Union in Costa Rica and the Ministry of Science, Innovation, Technology and Telecommunications of Costa Rica (MICITT) within the framework of the EU-LAC Digital Alliance under the European Union's Global Gateway strategy. The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and Expertise France supported the implementation of the meeting through the EU-LAC Digital Alliance Policy Dialogues, co-financed by the European Union and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The activity was also coordinated with the Cybersec Summit, organized by the Cyber Cluster Costa Rica on August 12, and was also attended by the Central American Delegation.