Global DPI Summit 2025 | Session Readback

The recently concluded Global DPI Summit 2025, that took place from November 4th-6th in Cape Town, South Africa, witnessed participation from nearly 1200 people across government, private sector, multilaterals, civil society organisations and other service providers in the ecosystem.

Below are reflections from Antara and Rohan, present at the summit as session organisers. Some key highlights from the sessions include the emphasis on building user trust in DPI, setting up pathways for public interest, and a consistent focus on human rights and governance structures to support technological deployments at population-scale. The following sections reflect our insights and suggested recommendations.

Panel Discussion:

The session we hosted covered Verifiable Credentials (VC) in action, something we are closely tracking as there is a move towards trust-based, tamper-proof digital credentialing in areas such as skilling, labour, education and health—and these are being considered as components of digital infrastructure that will be highly relevant for cross-border movement in the future:

• The India-Germany corridor is one such example, with policy agreements on skilling being in place, institutions that are able to issue VCs help to improve trust—as people are able to prove they are sharing authentic information (not illegitimate paper-based certificates) and help open pathways for skilling and employment—we are seeing this play out in the Middle East, ASEAN and other regions where people travel from for vocational and other skills-based training.

• The other advantage here is that issuance of VCs are dependent on institutions, and decoupled from national digital ID efforts, making these more use-case specific and less exclusionary.

• However, trust in VCs is still a major loophole as accrediting institutions is a huge task, and building user-interfaces like digital wallets to store these credentials will take more time for adoption in Global South countries—these were some issues that came up as we discussed cross-border application of VCs in our session.

Insights:

• The summit being organised in South Africa helped to bring a strong African Union (AU) focus to the discussions, as there was high participation from digital ministries across the continent. This helped move the needle from country implementation of DPI to cross-border regional cooperation, with the East African Community (EAC) and Southern African Development Community (SADC) displaying ongoing progress in adopting common standards to ease trade and movement:

  • Critical to note here is that the EAC was formed in 1967, and the SADC was formed in 1982, suggesting the increasing adoption of the DPI approach within these long-established groupings—this could be led by incentives to access more donor funding and efforts to promote ongoing digital transformation efforts in these regions.

  • Migration is looked at as a strong "use-case" for cross-border collaboration, showcasing digital ID and credentials that are accepted in multiple states (similar to how EUDI wallet is conceptualised), but there is work to do here in ensuring these are not just restricted to regular migration pathways such as labour and education, and build more discourse on DPI for vulnerable populations such as refugees, asylum-seekers and stateless populations.

• Apart from the AU, the other strong regional focus was on Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), again displaying cross-border verification of digital ID for easier movement. This is being led by the RED GEALC network, and being supported by World Bank and Co-Develop - another instance of a long-established entity adopting the DPI language:

  • Throughout these discussions, sovereignty came up as a strong factor behind adopting DPI (to show that governments have control over digital infrastructure they are building), indicating that the DPI approach has moved from being viewed as a means to fast track socio-economic development to now increasingly being positioned as a geopolitical measure to protect against Big Tech capture for critical elements such as ID, payments and data sharing.

  • Surprisingly, there was low representation from the ASEAN region even though there is movement towards digital cooperation there too.

  • The increased focus on cross-border cooperation has also left out conversations on portability of social protection for internal migration, an important factor that needs consideration as climate-induced displacement starts to take impact in the Global South.

    
    

Recommendations:

• DPI implementation is still heavily dependent on donor and multilateral funding. Creating a more sustainable ecosystem that builds inclusion and trust will require governments to invest public funding over the long-term for the development of DPI. The following is suggested: 

  • Increased transparency from philanthropies and multilaterals on DPI projects they are funding, with indicators that showcase the value of DPI implementation in a region. This will help governments make informed decisions on the trade-offs of DPI implementation, and assess whether deployment

    of DPI for socio-economic development is a good choice within their contexts at this time.

• Private sector and commercial actors are still involved in the DPI supply chain and procurement process, indicating the need to assess claims on DPI being a vehicle to promote digital sovereignty. There is also a need to evaluate how digital sovereignty is being conceptualised and understood across regions and the geopolitical considerations that precede such objectives.

• There is a need to consider how DPI and AI (both large-scale infrastructures) are being designed to work in tandem, especially within the public domain. As the India AI Impact Summit is approaching, there is a need to study the breakdowns in conceptions on ‘DPI for AI’ and ‘AI for DPI’ to help GSA members publish CSO-led perspectives on such advancements.