Малави при поддержке Ганы ускорит развитие цифрового правительства

Malawi to enhance digital government with Ghana’s support Malawi has reached out to Ghana for experience-sharing as the southeastern African country aims to strengthen its digital government implementation. A delegation from Lilongwe was in Accra recently for talks with the country’s Ministry of Communication, Digital Technology and Innovations on how to structure the planned collaboration, according to Tech News Africa. Ghana has made considerable progress in the building of its digital public infrastructure (DPI) with the Ghana Card cited among the successful national digital ID implementations across Africa. More than 19 million Ghanaians have the digital ID which is also facilitating access to a wide range of digital government services thanks to an interoperability infrastructure. The success in Ghana has come largely through an assemblage of factors, including political will which has driven strategic investment, structured collaboration, and the right regulatory and governance frameworks. Malawi now wants to use these as a reference point in order to forge ahead with its own digital government and digital innovation efforts. As part of the collaboration, Ghana will make available over a dozen technology companies to Malawi to support the development of some digital systems and infrastructure. As African governments build and strengthen their DPI ecosystems, they are increasingly seeing the need to learn from one another through strategic collaboration frameworks. What this suggests is that digital transformation is no longer principally being driven by donor-funded projects or technology suppliers, but by stronger South-South cooperation and intra-African policy and technical knowledge exchange. Ethiopia with its Fayda digital ID is already a reference point of that kind of collaboration for a number of African countries including Zambia and Mozambique. This also resonates with the UNDP’s Africa Accelerator for Digital Public Infrastructure initiative which is built around helping African countries develop sovereign, safe, and inclusive DPI, including through technical expertise, collaboration, and stronger institutional coordination. Through the Ghana collaboration, Malawi hopes to double down on its DPI development efforts by learning how to better connect and govern its digital systems. Already, the country has foundational infrastructure which includes a solid national ID system which has a very high coverage rate, connectivity and data storage infrastructure such as a data center, as well as a government data exchange platform. Last year, the government launched a five-year blueprint to accelerate birth registration and enable the country to meet target 16.9 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Article Topics Africa | biometrics | digital government | digital public infrastructure | Ghana | Malawi