The ADSR experts are professionals from African States who were selected as part of the Africa Deep Seabed Resources (ADSR) project for deployment within the Secretariat of ISA.

The ADSR project is implemented by ISA in partnership with the African Union and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) following a joint voluntary commitment registered at the 2017 UN Ocean Conference by ISA and the African Mineral Development Centre (AMDC) of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (since transferred to the African Union) in support of the sustainable development of Africa’s Blue Economy (#OceanAction16374).

The main objective of the secondments is two-fold. First, to build on existing capacity-building initiatives to provide national experts with technical skills on deep-seabed related matters. Second, to enable the ISA Secretariat to benefit from the contribution of such experts with a view to advancing specific tasks identified in partnership with the Legal and Technical Commission (LTC).

A total of 10 national experts, including five women, were selected in 2020 among over 50 applicants. Deployments were initially scheduled in 2020. However, due to the global pandemic of COVID-19, deployments will take place on a rolling basis. As of January 2022, five experts have been deployed.