UNDP outlines the ‘5Cs’ approach to accelerate sovereign DPI implementation

A policy paper titled “Digital public infrastructure in Africa: A leapfrog catalyst for inclusive growth and prosperity,” has laid out five principal factors which it says African nations must adopt in order to speed up the building of interoperable and sovereign digital public infrastructure (DPI).

The paper, which serves as a strategic roadmap for African decision-makers to move from fragmented digital projects to cohesive national systems, was released at an event during the UN Open Source Week 2026. This was alongside the launch of the Africa Accelerator for Digital Public Infrastructure (AA4DPI) initiative which aims to support African nations in making DPI veritable essential “public rails” for delivering services at societal scale.

The release of the paper is timely as it comes within a context where the discourse around DPI interoperability and sovereignty is getting intense. Nations are increasingly engaging either in partnerships, legislative framework upgrades or regional efforts to set up DPI systems that can enable them deliver better for their citizens.

As mentioned in the paper, the keywords representing the 5Cs are commitment of high-level political leadership, capacity though investment in domestic technical expertise, capital which represents a shift from short-term project funding to sustained investment across the full system lifecycle, community involvement which means building public trust through safeguards-first design and robust data protection, and collaboration through which shared standards and open protocols can be adopted to enable secure cross-border data exchange and regional integration.

The paper emphasizes interoperability, stating that while Africa has no shortage of digital ambition, many well-intentioned pilots have actually failed to deliver systemic change for governments because they cannot “speak” to one another. This is what Margins ID Group’s CEO Moses Biden Jr emphasized at the ID4Africa AGM in May.

Per the report, the time is now to accelerate steps towards building such open source-based and interoperable DPI which can help countries substantially transform their economies.

It mentions a number of examples including Tanzania’s TIPS payment system and the NIN in Nigeria driving financial inclusion, the Irembo platform in Rwanda and Mauritius’ infoHighway facilitating digital government service access, social protection as seen with the SASSA scheme in South Africa, as well as Benin’s public revenue mobilization model.

The publication also underlines what it characterizes as “open by design” where countries must build on open standards and digital public goods (DPGs) in order to retain strategic control and ensure regional portability of their DPI. It warns that countries must hasten their steps in setting up the right DPI that acts as the foundation for shared prosperity rather than conduits for entrenching dependency and exclusion.

Building DPI systems that can speak to each other is critical, the paper notes, as fragmented systems leave an estimated $450 billion opportunity under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) unrealized.

Also, it is important especially given the ongoing AI revolution where DPI provides the trusted data needed for responsible AI, the need to deal with fiscal constraints by offering governments a way to deliver services more efficiently and mobilize domestic resources, and to drive inclusion which the paper says requires intentional action that must also seek to close the gender gap. The UNDP, which has been supporting DPI efforts around the world, says it will continue to play a catalytic role by supporting governments with “tools, expertise and coordinated partnerships.”

The UN considers DPI as major pillar in the realization of its Global Digital Compact initiative launched in 2024. The pact urges more investment in DPI especially in development countries. This month, the UN launched a DPI safeguard accelerator program to help countries build defenses that address certain DPI risks.

Politics remains the hardest challenge for DPI

While organizations like the United Nations and UNDP are working to mitigate risks to end users of digital public infrastructure, DPI experts are increasingly focused on threats stemming from governance and politics. Political resistance can prevent infrastructure from being deployed or used as intended, while weak governance can leave successful systems vulnerable to misuse, capture or loss of public trust.

​Politics, in particular, can suffocate DPI projects before they even take off, as former Chairman of Pakistan’s National Database & Registration Authority (NADRA), Tariq Malik, explains in an analysis of what went wrong with digitizing the country’s tax administration.

​NADRA was tasked with assisting Pakistan’s Federal Board of Revenue in improving the state’s ability to collect taxes through digital identity and trusted data exchange. The work, however, faced pushback including delays in formalizing data-sharing agreements between agencies, jurisdictional disputes and informal pressure. Landowners, real estate developers, major traders, and agribusinesses have an interest in opacity, and building a system capable of making that opacity visible threatens a power structure, Malik writes for The Friday Times.

“International institutions that fund DPI investment need to understand this. It is not sufficient to support the building of platforms”, he says. The harder question is whether the political conditions exist for those platforms to be used against the interests they most threaten.”

Malik’s concerns about political resistance echo warnings he delivered at ID4Africa 2026, where he argued that the growing power of digital public infrastructure makes governance safeguards essential. In that presentation, he warned that successful DPI systems concentrate power and risk, making independent institutions, judicial oversight, federated architecture and strong data governance critical to ensuring infrastructure serves the public interest rather than political or commercial interests.

The argument aligns with a growing emphasis on governance across the DPI community. The Inter-American Development Bank, which supports DPI projects across Latin America, similarly argues that a lack of shared rules, coordination and standards can undermine interoperability, erode public trust and lead to duplication of effort.

Political will and proper governance, not just technical effectiveness, are therefore necessary to ensure the long-term viability of DPI systems that benefit countries and their people.

Article Topics

Africa  |  Africa Accelerator for Digital Public Infrastructure (AA4DPI)  |  biometrics  |  digital public infrastructure  |  digital sovereignty  |  UNDP