Data held in separate institutions often holds the answer to problems none of them can solve alone: targeting social protection, tracking disease outbreaks, assessing credit for informal businesses or planning infrastructure. Yet cross-organisation data sharing across the continent frequently stalls, or happens informally through spreadsheets passed between staff, without a clear legal basis or any way for data subjects and partners to hold anyone to account. A trust framework fixes this by setting out in advance who can take part, what each participant may do with the data, which safeguards apply and how breaches are handled.

The Designing Trust Frameworks and Governance for Cross-Organisation Data Sharing in Africa Training Course takes participants from the policy context to a working governance design. It opens with continental and national policy, including the African Union Data Policy Framework and the growing body of national data protection legislation, before moving to the architecture of a trust framework: roles, rules, accreditation and liability. Later sessions cover lawful bases and purpose limitation, data sharing agreements, data protection impact assessments, technical controls, cross-border transfers, and the governing bodies, dispute processes and audits that keep a scheme credible over time.

Learning is anchored in realistic sharing scenarios drawn from health, social protection, financial services and research. Participants work in groups to design a framework for one of these scenarios, drafting its rulebook and agreement clauses and presenting it for peer challenge on the final day.

On completing the programme, participants will be able to:

• Analyse the policy, legal and institutional landscape for data sharing across African jurisdictions.
• Identify the participants, data flows and use cases that a trust framework must govern.
• Design scheme rules covering membership, permitted uses, accreditation, liability and exit.
• Determine the lawful basis and purpose limits for each category of shared data.
• Draft the essential clauses of a data sharing agreement and its supporting schedules.
• Specify technical and organisational safeguards proportionate to the sensitivity of the data.
• Establish oversight bodies, complaint handling, dispute resolution and audit arrangements.

The programme is aimed at professionals who negotiate, approve, operate or oversee data exchange between institutions, such as:

• Data protection officers and privacy managers
• Legal counsel and company secretaries handling data agreements
• Chief data officers, data governance leads and data stewards
• Digital government, e-government and ICT directors
• National statistics office and civil registration officials
• Health information system managers and researchers handling patient data
• Compliance officers in banks, fintechs, insurers and telecoms operators
• Programme and MEAL managers in NGOs and development agencies
• Staff of data protection authorities and sector regulators

Participants return to their organisations with:

• A trust framework blueprint for a real or proposed sharing arrangement, showing roles, rules and lines of accountability.
• A data sharing agreement checklist with model clause headings for purpose, security, retention and breach notification.
• A completed data flow map and risk register for the chosen use case.
• A data protection impact assessment template adapted to multi-party sharing.
• Draft terms of reference for a data governance board or steering committee.
• A phased plan for piloting, onboarding participants and reviewing the framework.

Each session moves from concept to application, using these methods:

• Briefings on continental policy, data protection principles and governance design
• Scenario files from health, social protection, financial services and research partnerships
• Clause-drafting workshops using sample data sharing agreements
• Data flow mapping and risk assessment exercises in small groups
• A capstone in which teams design and defend a complete trust framework

A CPD-accredited Certificate of Completion issued by Vision Reach Global Consultancy is awarded to each participant who attends the full programme and completes the group design project and drafting exercises.