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The UK’s Centre for Digital Trade and Innovation (C4DTI) will expand into an international operation, setting its sights on accelerating digitalised trade in markets around the world, GTR can reveal. 

C4DTI, based in Teesside in North-East England, was launched in April 2022 as a way of aligning private and public sector initiatives on moving trade away from paper-based processes, improving efficiency and supporting SME exporters. 

Following a series of projects in the UK – including supporting UK legal reforms on electronic trade documents that took effect in September last year – an international version of the centre, called iC4DTI, is now due to be launched on December 5. 

Chris Southworth, secretary general of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) UK and the international centre’s co-founder and director, says a flurry of activity after the UK reforms led to “all sorts of requests for support, especially from emerging markets interested in working with us”. 

Among the markets to have shown interest already are Commonwealth and Asean member states, he tells GTR, and the centre’s focus is expected to span from major trading hubs such as Singapore, the UAE and India to developing economies on every continent. 

Although the ICC already provides coordination on legal frameworks and standards, Southworth says a “big problem is that underneath that, there is a real need to build capability and implement those frameworks, which is pretty complicated”. 

“You have to be working closely with governments, but it has to be practitioner-led, because you’re dealing with customs teams, border teams, trade corridors, free trade agreements and various companies,” he says. 

iC4DTI is due to be formally unveiled at an ICC UK event in London next month, and efforts are currently underway to establish a globally representative board of directors, likely to be finalised next year. 

A separate advisory board will also be convened to give market-specific guidance. It is hoped representatives will be sourced from institutions with regional expertise such as multilateral development banks. 

iC4DTI co-founder Oswald Kuyler, who is also a digital trade advisor to ICC UK and the Asian Development Bank, as well as chief operating officer of MonetaGo, says one initial area of focus will be bringing in “fresh, new talent at scale”, particularly around digital trade law, policy and standards. 

“Most of that talent today is senior and costly, and you can count the amount of digital trade talent available globally on two hands” he tells GTR.  

“We need to drastically increase the amount of talent available in the ecosystem that will fuel this journey, and they can’t all be based in developed economies either; we need people in Africa, in Southeast Asia, in Latin America, so we can disperse this knowledge.” 

To do that, Kuyler says a crucial next step will be to secure sufficient funding to seed this talent globally. Because iC4DTI will operate as a non-profit entity with a focus on emerging markets, one potential route is philanthropy investment to help lead the scale up of this talent. 

“We want to make sure that micro and small businesses across developing nations don’t get left behind and can actually gain access to trade finance,” he says. “This needs to provide a non-profit model for those who get locked out of the change, unable to afford standard consultancy rate cards.” 

Meanwhile, in more developed markets that are pushing ahead with digital trade, Southworth says another priority will be ensuring separate initiatives are interoperable. 

“One might have the legal infrastructure in place but not the digital identity infrastructure; another might have all of it in place already but in a way that does not interoperate across the ecosystem,” he says. “That’s where we’re really putting a focus.” 

Though not yet officially launched, there are already signs iC4DTI is gaining traction. A report published last week by the Lord Mayor of London suggested the city use the new centre to provide a programme of technical assistance to countries looking to facilitate harmonised digital trade and trade finance. 

It is also connecting with a digital “test bed” at the Teesside Freeport, which, once complete, should facilitate the electronic exchange of trade, logistics and cargo information. 

“What iC4DTI is all about is delivering a cheaper, faster, more sustainable trading system,” Southworth says. 

“Its purpose is to accelerate digitalisation of global trade on the implementation side and make sure that no one gets left behind, especially in those emerging markets. And SMEs, of course, are the big beneficiaries here.”