Economic Value of DPI: A Focus on ID and Interoperability

Authored by Charlene Migwe – Program Director, and Dr. Emrys Schoemaker – Senior Director, Advisory & Policy, both at Caribou, and Emmanuel Khisa – Senior Program Officer at Gates Foundation.

As conversations around Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) gain momentum ahead of the G20 meetings in South Africa this year, we explore a systematic learning agenda focused on inclusion, utility, and trust that is essential in ensuring DPI delivers meaningful and inclusive economic opportunity at scale. 

DPI (digital IDs, payments, and data exchange systems) holds immense potential to unlock economic opportunity. Done right, it can deliver real livelihood improvements, particularly for women, youth, migrants, and informal workers by expanding access to essential services, lowering transaction costs, and enabling participation in cross-border trade and entrepreneurship. 

However, realizing this potential requires more than infrastructure. In the African context, shaped by diverse macroeconomic conditions, informal systems, and complex political histories, DPI must be grounded in clear purpose, practical use cases, alignment with government priorities, and earned trust. Digital ID, in particular, is foundational to enabling access and unlocking the full potential of trusted digital public infrastructure.

Across Africa, millions of printed national ID cards remain uncollected, a significant gap between issuance and actual use. In Kenya, over 476,000 national ID cards remain uncollected. Nigeria has nearly 800,000, and Uganda reports 3 million as of mid-2023. These figures, when paired with the hundreds of millions across the continent who still lack any form of ID, reveal that issuing IDs alone is not enough. Populations must be able to access, use, and benefit from them in real-world contexts. According to the World Bank, the most common reasons people cite for not having an ID include lack of supporting documentation, long travel distances, and high costs. Women, in particular, are more likely to report cost as a barrier. 

Each unclaimed identity card represents not just a bureaucratic backlog, but a missed opportunity—for citizens to register for school, access health care, start a business, or vote. It highlights a sobering truth: the existence of infrastructure does not guarantee its use. 

Even where IDs have been rolled out, questions persist. Are citizens actually using them? For what? If digital identity is supposed to be the gateway to services, why are some still locked out? Maybe a deficit of trust? Maybe fear of surveillance? Or even worse, deliberate marginalization of politically targeted groups to exclude them from civic duty? 

Whatever the cause, lack of digital ID remains an important disincentive factor in access and participation in the digital economy, much like access to land is for the agricultural economy.

In many contexts, conversations around digital ID are deeply polarized, caught between uncritical techno-optimism and serious concerns about surveillance, exclusion, and the risk of locking marginalized individuals out of essential services and rights. Building trust means including diverse actors in the design, deployment, and governance of digital infrastructure. Insight from Caribou’s ongoing research into multi-stakeholder governance of DPI shows that when people work together around system design and implementation, the chances of success are higher. For DPI, this might mean shifting the focus of DPI deployment to clear use cases where the value of ID is inclusive and tangible, such as access to healthcare, education, job opportunities, and safe mobility. These everyday experiences that drive livelihoods are where DPI can earn legitimacy and demonstrate its relevance, particularly for those navigating informal economies, migration, and cross-border challenges. When people see real, positive outcomes from using digital IDs, trust grows—and meaningful adoption follows, which is crucial for driving economic impact.  

Despite DPI’s potential, recent assessments reveal a nuanced impact on economic growth. Studies such as those by NASSCOM and the Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) underscore that while digital platforms like India’s Aadhaar and UPI enhance public service delivery and foster entrepreneurship, their direct GDP contribution remains under 1%. The CSEP report challenges the assumption that mere adoption of DPI catalyzes transformation, emphasizing instead the importance of active utilization and service availability.

Further insight into DPI’s economic value can be found in the data flows that it can enable. Learnings from Caribou’s ongoing research in Kenya show that improved data interoperability enabled by DPI and regulatory alignment could unlock significant economic benefits. These include enhanced productivity and business efficiency, and improved service delivery through lower consumer costs. Enabling cross-border data flows can also drive higher business revenues, strengthen investor confidence, and support job creation, collectively contributing to broader economic growth and deeper regional integration. Current modelling estimates that cross-border data flows could unlock an increase of up to 5% of Kenya’s GDP, increase business revenue by up to $4.2 billion, and increase employment by up to 412,000 jobs. 

There is also significant economic impact through platforms that are not part of the core DPI stack – digital IDs, payments, and data exchange systems.  Caribou’s social agriculture work, conducted in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation, explores how farmers, especially youth and women, are using everyday social media tools like YouTube, Facebook, and WhatsApp to access agricultural knowledge, connect to markets, and build community support. 

While these platforms may fall outside traditional definitions of DPI, there is an argument to include these private platforms within the concept of DPI, as publicly available digital infrastructure (PADI). Such platforms are playing an increasingly vital role in rural and peri-urban digital ecosystems. By enabling users not only to consume information but to create, share, and access markets for their services and products, these tools contribute directly to economic participation and productivity. For women and youth, groups often underserved by formal systems, these platforms lower barriers to participation, enabling them to shape their own economic opportunities and contribute to local value creation. Recognizing the value of these platforms broadens our understanding of DPI’s economic potential, especially in low-connectivity, high-initiative contexts where informal digital networks drive real livelihood gains.

However, these platforms are not designed for the kinds of activity that drive economic growth and could benefit from further integration with “true” DPI. For example, Caribou research shows that because these platforms do not have identity or transaction features that can mitigate trust deficits, people are forced into insecure solutions to identity verification and financial transactions—solutions that more established DPI, such as digital identity and open transaction protocols – such as the Beckn protocol –  can help solve. 

When made accessible, DPI can unlock significant economic opportunities, enabling youth entrepreneurship, supporting women’s participation in the digital economy, and fostering the growth of micro- and small enterprises. In sectors like fintech, digital health, and e-commerce, DPI lowers the cost of entry by replacing expensive physical infrastructure with scalable digital alternatives. 

To fully unlock the transformative potential of DPI, inclusive access must be at the heart of policymaking and implementation. This requires moving beyond a narrow focus on technical deployment toward strategies that nurture locally driven, socially embedded, and cross-sectoral digital ecosystems. Recognizing both state and non-state platforms as core components of digital infrastructure is more than a definitional shift; it is essential to building systems that reflect the real ways in which women and youth already access, use, and benefit from digital systems.

Consider the AfCFTA Digital Identity Project (DigiPass for Trade), which is a critical step in creating a streamlined, safer cross-border trading experience. Its success hinges on inclusive design, delivery, and how well it addresses the real pain points women face: lack of access to trade information, harassment at borders, bribe-seeking officials, and inconsistent documentation. As Hon. Dr. Jumoke Oduwole, Nigeria’s Minister of Trade, rightly emphasizes, the need for trust in digital trade is important: 

If DigiPass helps women traders move goods and money safely and legally, it will spread, unlocking wider economic empowerment by reducing their reliance on informal and often risky trade channels. But if it fails to address the real barriers women face, including safety, access, and trust, it won’t gain trust, traction, or deliver on its promise of inclusive economic growth. Equally, the Protocol on Women and Youth in Trade sets a bold agenda. To deliver on its promise, African governments and partners must scale capacity building, access to finance, and digital literacy initiatives, especially for youth-led and women-led businesses.

DPI, when made accessible and inclusive, can drive meaningful economic growth by enabling women and youth to participate more fully in the digital economy and cross-border trade. But its success depends on addressing real-world barriers such as safety, trust, and access. 

It’s time to shift the conversation around DPI in Africa from systems to outcomes. The learning agenda must center on inclusion, utility, and trust to ensure DPI delivers meaningful impact for the majority of households. This means focusing on what improved livelihoods look like in practice and identifying the services and support structures needed for DPI to meaningfully improve people’s lives. To deepen our understanding and ensure DPI delivers on its promise for Africa, we need to focus on outcomes and context-specific research: 

A learning agenda (primarily experiment-driven studies) on digital ID for economic opportunity is critical to the successful acceleration of ID adoption at scale. Implementing this learning agenda will encourage opportunities for high-impact and less controversial applications of ID, particularly in the African context.