🔆 Key Takeaways: India-Africa Digital Collaboration ✅ Significance of Africa Day: • Celebrated on May 25 to mark the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (1963). • Symbolizes Africa’s journey toward unity, independence, and socio-economic development. ✅ Africa’s Digital Transformation Strategy (2020–2030): • Emphasizes digital innovation as central to development. • Encourages governments to adopt digital solutions for inclusive growth. ✅ India’s Evolving Africa Strategy: • Blends state-led financing with socially embedded solutions. • Social enterprises delivering low-cost, high-impact innovations are increasingly part of New Delhi’s engagement, reflecting inclusive, adaptable partnerships. ✅ Technology-Driven Partnerships: • Marked by integrated, technology-driven cooperation. • Builds on India’s success with Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) systems: Aadhaar, UPI, CoWIN, DIKSHA. • Focus on sharing and co-creating digital solutions to improve governance and service delivery. • Aligns with Africa’s continental digital agendas, including Policy and Regulatory Initiative for Digital Africa and Smart Africa Alliance. ✅ Key India-Africa Collaborations: • MoUs with Togo and Zambia for digital ID and governance systems. • Partnership with Ghana to implement India’s UPI for faster transactions. • Bank of Namibia pact with India’s National Payments Corporation to develop a UPI-like system. ✅ Educational and Capacity-Building Initiatives: • IIT Madras campus established in Zanzibar focusing on data science and AI. • Public-private partnerships fund scholarships and foster talent. ✅ Strategic Importance: • India’s DPI model is framed as a digital public good, open-source and adaptable. • Offers a public-oriented alternative to surveillance-driven or proprietary systems. • Emphasizes adapting tools to local contexts through state-led collaboration beyond technology transfer. ✅ Challenges to Digital Adoption in Africa: • Africa faces the world’s largest digital divide due to high data/device costs, rural-urban connectivity gaps, and gender disparities in digital access. • Digital infrastructure expansion depends on reliable energy, a bottleneck in many countries. • Sustainable power generation and grid investments are essential. ✅ Global Competition and Future Roadmap: • India competes with China, EU, and US in Africa. • About 85% of African countries have national ID systems with digital capabilities; over 70% collect biometric data. • A new India-Africa digital compact could be a scalable model for inclusive global digital governance. #ir #globalpartnerships