In June 2026 the United Nations Development Programme launched the Africa Accelerator for Digital Public Infrastructure and released a companion report that frames DPI as a leapfrog catalyst. The premise is direct: with development assistance under pressure and debt constraints…
Africa processed roughly $1.4 trillion through mobile money in 2025—about two-thirds of global transaction value—according to GSMA data. East Africa alone moved more than $800 billion. What began as a workaround for people without bank accounts has become everyday economic…
More than 500 million Africans still lack a verifiable digital identity, according to the United Nations Development Programme’s 2026 analysis, even as mobile subscriptions have surged past one billion. That gap is not merely administrative. Without a trusted way to…
Identity, payments, and data exchange are becoming compulsory national infrastructure. That changes the cost of compliance, the shape of competition, and who captures the value. For most of the past decade, African DPI was a story of pilots and strategy…
In October 2021, Kenya’s High Court ruled that the government had acted unlawfully in rolling out Huduma Namba, its flagship digital identity programme. The state had collected personal and biometric data from millions of citizens without first conducting a data…
In April 2020, Togo had no functioning social registry and a population suddenly cut off from daily income by pandemic restrictions. Within weeks, the government launched Novissi, a cash transfer programme delivered entirely by mobile money. Eligibility was first determined…
When Stripe bought Nigeria’s Paystack in 2020 for a reported $200 million, the headlines focused on the founders and their investors. Less attention went to the infrastructure underneath. Paystack’s product worked because Nigeria already had a national instant payment switch,…
In a Nairobi informal settlement, a mother no longer loses a morning to a school bursar’s queue. She opens her phone, authenticates with a national ID, and pays fees in seconds. In Kigali, a learner’s exam result arrives as a…
The phrase “digital public infrastructure” used to live in conference halls.In 2026 it has started to look like a work plan. In late June, the United Nations Development Programme launched the Africa Accelerator for Digital Public Infrastructure in New York…
For most of independent Africa, information lived in rooms. Births sat in ledgers. Land sat in dusty files. A hospital record travelled only as far as a clerk could carry it. A trader crossing from Kigali to Kampala carried photocopies…
