Think about the roads, bridges, and electricity grids that make modern life possible. Without them, nothing works. Digital Public Infrastructure, or DPI, is the digital equivalent: shared technology systems that an entire country can build on.

The idea is straightforward. Instead of every government department building its own isolated digital system, you build a set of common foundations once and let everyone build on top of them. The result is faster, cheaper, more inclusive public services.

The building blocks

DPI is typically made up of three foundational layers, each solving a basic problem that governments, businesses, and citizens encounter every day.

• Digital identity: A verified way for every person to prove who they are online, unlocking access to services from healthcare to banking.
• Digital payments: Infrastructure that lets money move between people, businesses, and government instantly and at low cost.
• Secure data exchange: Systems that allow people to share their own information safely, while remaining in control of that data.

What makes DPI different from a regular government website or app is that these systems are designed as open, reusable platforms. They don’t serve a single purpose. A digital identity system, for example, can unlock access to healthcare, banking, education, and social protection all at once, without each department having to build its own solution from scratch.

Why this matters for South Africa

South Africa has some of the highest levels of inequality in the world, persistent youth unemployment, and deep inefficiencies in public service delivery. Millions of people still queue for hours at government offices to access basic services. Departments operate in silos, each running disconnected digital systems, which means duplicated costs, wasted time, and a fragmented experience for the people they serve. There is no unified digital identity, so proving who you are remains a bureaucratic hurdle, particularly for marginalised communities.

DPI addresses these problems at the root. Rather than digitising one service at a time, it builds shared rails that all services can run on. There is already evidence this works: over 95% of SASSA grant beneficiaries now receive payments electronically, and during the COVID-19 pandemic the agency used basic digital tools to process applications from over 14 million people. SARS’s e-filing system has streamlined tax compliance since 2006. These are early signals of what becomes possible when digital foundations are in place. With roughly three quarters of the population online but fewer than a quarter using the internet for government services, the opportunity to turn connectivity into real access is enormous.

What South Africa is building

South Africa is putting this approach into practice through MyMzansi, as also articulated in the country’s digital transformation roadmap. Led by the Presidency’s Digital Services Unit and coordinated with the Department of Communications and Digital Technology and National Treasury, MyMzansi sets out a phased plan to transform how residents and organisations interact with government.

MyMzansi’s mission is to simplify and improve how residents, businesses, and government interact by using shared technology, modern design, and collaborative delivery models.

The platform is being built on three core DPI components: a national digital identity system, a payments orchestration platform, and MzansiXchange, a secure data exchange layer that enables the privacy-respecting sharing of information across government and partners.

These systems are being developed using open standards and digital public goods, meaning the technology remains interoperable, transparent, and locally owned. This matters because it means South Africa retains sovereignty over its own critical digital infrastructure rather than being locked into proprietary systems.

Phase 1 is prioritising the social protection system because it touches millions of the country’s most vulnerable people and offers an immediate opportunity to demonstrate what DPI can do in practice. The focus is on digitising services for faster, more reliable access and linking social grants to employment, training, and income-generating opportunities that can create pathways to sustainable livelihoods.

A global movement

South Africa is joining a growing international community of countries that have adopted this approach. India’s Aadhaar identity system and UPI payments platform now serve over a billion people and have dramatically expanded financial inclusion. Brazil, Estonia, and Singapore have built similar foundations, each tailored to their own context and needs.

South Africa has also formally joined the Digital Public Goods Alliance and the 50-in-5 campaign, a global initiative supporting 50 countries in designing, implementing, and scaling DPI components by the end of 2028. The MyMzansi prototype was built in just ten weeks, a signal that the ambition here is to move fast and learn in the open rather than spend years planning behind closed doors.

Where the Policy Innovation Lab fits in

Technology alone does not make DPI work. For digital public infrastructure to deliver on its promise, it needs a policy, legal, and regulatory environment fit for a modern digital government. That is where the Policy Innovation Lab comes in.

The Lab works with the Presidency and other partners to help ensure that South Africa’s digital transformation is built on strong regulatory foundations. We research the policy and regulatory frameworks needed to guide DPI, from data protection and digital identity to AI governance and interoperability standards. We convene policymakers, technologists, and international experts to stress-test new approaches, including through initiatives like our recent regulatory sandbox workshop exploring how government can create safe spaces to experiment with digital systems before scaling them. And we build the capacity of public servants to engage meaningfully with the technologies shaping the future of the state.

DPI is one of the most significant infrastructure projects South Africa has undertaken in the digital age. Getting it right requires strong policy, inclusive design, and the kind of collaborative, evidence-based approach that sits at the heart of what we do.