Digital public infrastructure (DPI) – the shared digital systems that allow people, governments and businesses to verify identity, make payments, exchange data and access services securely and at scale – is at the centre of Africa’s development agenda. Across the continent, governments and regional bodies are building the digital rails for identity, payments, data exchange, public services, health systems and cross-border trade. However, momentum is stalling due to fragmented national systems that do not talk to each other. Consequently, there is a growing imperative for the continent to align around an ‘Africa Stack’, a shared architecture of interoperable, rights-preserving and publicly governed digital rails. In pursuing this framework, decision makers must recognise that DPI is inherently political. It can both drive financial inclusion and expand state control. Ultimately, the design of the Africa Stack will decide who is recognised, who accesses vital services, how data flows and what protections exist when systems fail.
An Africa Stack would not function as a centralised continental platform, nor would it be a copy of the India Stack. It would serve as a common architecture that allows national and regional digital systems to work together through shared standards, open protocols and enforceable safeguards. In practical terms, this means three interconnected layers: identity systems that can support cross-border verification without creating a single continental database; payment systems that allow low-cost local-currency transactions across borders; and data-exchange systems that enable trusted information flows for trade, social protection and health while protecting privacy and sovereignty. Africa needs this because DPI is already being built, but often in fragments. Without a stack approach, the continent risks creating impressive but disconnected systems: digital IDs that cannot travel across borders, payment platforms that do not serve small traders affordably, and health-data systems that cannot coordinate quickly during outbreaks.
Identity Layer
In Southern Africa, South Africa’s MyMzansi roadmap is one of the clearest signs that DPI is on the government’s reform agenda. The roadmap frames the public sector’s digital transformation around core DPI components. When identity, eligibility, payments and service access are digitised, design choices become distributional choices. They determine who is recognised, who is excluded, who can appeal an error and who controls sensitive data.
But South Africa’s roadmap also points to a broader regional challenge. DPI cannot stop at national borders. Southern Africa is a region of migration, trade, remittances, informal cross-border livelihoods and uneven national identity systems. A regional economy cannot function efficiently if a person’s legal identity, payment access or financial history becomes unusable the moment they cross a border. The scale of these access gaps remains significant. According to the World Bank’s Identification for Development dataset, around 800 million people globally lack an official proof of identity, with a substantial share living in sub-Saharan Africa. Financial exclusion is also a major constraint; the World Bank’s Global Findex 2021 found that only 55% of adults in sub-Saharan Africa had an account at a bank, mobile money provider or other financial institution, leaving hundreds of millions without access to formal financial services. These gaps become even more pronounced across borders, where fragmented identity and verification systems can prevent migrants, traders and mobile workers from opening accounts, accessing credit or sending money affordably.
This is why SADC’s emerging work on a federated e-Know Your Customer ecosystem is important. Our recent research describes this as Africa’s first regional DPI initiative. It is a federated ecosystem spanning 16 SADC member states, designed to connect digital identity, payments and secure data exchange while preserving national sovereignty over citizen data.
Payments Layer
The payment space is moving even faster. The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System is designed to enable instant, secure cross-border payments among African countries, allowing transactions to be settled in local currencies rather than routed through foreign currencies. COMESA has also entered this space. In October 2025, the bloc launched a Digital Retail Payments Platform to enable cross-border trade using local currencies, beginning with a trial between Malawi and Zambia. The platform is intended to reduce transaction costs and support small and medium enterprises. The Malawi–Zambia trial is important because it shows the shift from continental aspiration to corridor-based implementation. This is likely how DPI will scale in Africa: not through a single grand platform, but through interoperable systems that demonstrate value in specific use cases before expanding. For the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), this is foundational infrastructure; without trusted, low-cost payment rails, continental trade will remain easier to imagine than to use.
At the continental level, the AU has already laid important foundations. The AU Interoperability Framework for Digital ID emphasises inclusive, trusted foundational identity systems as the backbone of authoritative identity data. The AfCFTA Protocol on Digital Trade, adopted in 2024, points in the same direction by calling on states parties to promote interoperability of legal frameworks for cross-border data transfers while protecting personal data. These provisions are the legal and institutional conditions for trusted digital markets.Interoperability prevents countries from building isolated systems that cannot speak to one another. Data protection is what prevents integration from becoming extraction. This is why Africa should move toward an Africa Stack: not as a single continental platform, but as a shared governance and interoperability architecture that connects identity, payment and data systems while preserving national control and protecting citizens’ rights.
Date Exchange Layer
Global health emergencies such as the latest Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, and the Hantavirus identified with the support of South African scientists, illustrate why an Africa Stack cannot be limited to identity and payments; the data-exchange layer is equally critical. Outbreak response depends on rapid contact tracing and case reporting, cross-border coordination, laboratory intelligence and public trust. But health data is among the most sensitive categories of personal data. Digital health DPI must therefore be governed through clear rules on purpose limitation, cybersecurity, access control and institutional accountability.
Africa’s DPI Moment Is Not Only a Story of Innovation – It Is an Issue of Power
The same digital systems that can improve access to services can also deepen surveillance. The same identity systems that can support inclusion can exclude people who lack documentation, connectivity or digital literacy. The same data-sharing systems that can improve policy coordination can expose citizens to misuse if legal safeguards are weak. This is why DPI must be treated as public infrastructure, not technology procurement. Procurement asks what system is being bought. Governance asks who has power over the system, what limits exist on that power and what remedies citizens have when the system harms them.
Decisions about how digital identity, payment and data systems are designed and governed determine whether they expand public access and accountability or concentrate state and institutional control. Real-world experiences already illustrate these risks. In Uganda, civil society has warned that the national digital ID system excludes some citizens from accessing essential services while operating in a context of limited transparency and weak data-protection safeguards, as documented by Privacy International and the Chased Away and Left to Die report.
Recommendations
Three priorities should guide Africa’s DPI agenda.
First, inclusion must be designed into systems, not promised after launch. Rural communities, women, informal traders, people with disabilities and those without smartphones need offline pathways, accessible interfaces and meaningful redress mechanisms.
Second, interoperability must be treated as a governance challenge, not only a technical one. Identity, payments and data systems must work across borders while respecting national sovereignty and individual rights.
Third, data governance must move from framework adoption to enforceable implementation. The AU’s Malabo Convention is an important continental reference point, but DPI will not earn public trust without clear safeguards, independent oversight and remedies citizens can use.
The measure of success is not how many platforms are launched, dashboards built or pilots announced. It is whether a young trader can move money across borders affordably, whether a migrant can access services without being rendered invisible, whether a rural household can receive support quickly, whether health data can save lives without compromising rights and whether citizens can trust the systems that increasingly mediate their relationship with the state. Ultimately, the outcomes of the Africa Stack should be judged by its ability to deliver inclusion, opportunity and rights-respecting public services at scale.
