Africa to extend digital access to critical services to 100 million individuals and businesses over the next 10 years

Mastercard and the African Development Bank Group launched the Mobilizing Access to the Digital Economy (MADE) Alliance: Africa to extend digital access to critical services to 100 million individuals and businesses in Africa over the next 10 years. The announcement was made on the sidelines of the U.S.-Africa Business Forum hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The Alliance will initially focus on supporting the agricultural sector and women. Among the first efforts will be a pilot program launching this year to support three million farmers in Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria by working with local banks to provide digital identities and access to high-quality seeds and agricultural inputs. The Alliance intends to expand to Uganda, Ethiopia, Ghana and the rest of the continent.

Michael Miebach – CEO of Mastercard. “This Alliance builds on the innovations and investments we are already making with partners in 45 countries to enhance Africa’s digital infrastructure and accelerate inclusive growth.” 

As co-chairs, the African Development Bank Group will invest $300 million to support Alliance programs, providing funding for digital infrastructure and incentivizing ecosystem actors to enhance digital access, and Mastercard will register 15 million users in Africa onto its Community Pass platform within five years, with interoperable digital infrastructure to facilitate involvement from a range of ecosystem participants.

Launched in 2020, Community Pass is a social enterprise at Mastercard that digitizes and connects remote, underserved communities to governments, NGOs and the private sector for access to critical services.

To enable more people to join the digital economy, an ecosystem of public and private sector partners is critical. The Alliance matches partners’ complementary strengths in key geographies to promote sustainable digital access. Together, the partners will deliver connectivity, skilling, employment and digital access to financial and other critical services.

More than half a dozen organizations have committed to participate in the MADE Alliance: Africa at launch, including Equity Bank, Microsoft, Heifer International, Unconnected.org and Syngenta Foundation. The African Development Bank Group and Mastercard will serve as initial co-chairs of the effort.

The efforts of the MADE Alliance: Africa will support the U.S. Digital Transformation with Africa Initiative (DTA) and the African Union’s Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa (DTS). It also ties into other business objectives announced this year focused on Africa, including:

A memorandum of agreement with the International Trade Administration, a bureau within the U.S. Department of Commerce, to advance digital access and inclusion in Africa based on a mutual interest to support the aims of the U.S. Government’s Digital Transformation with Africa initiative and MADE Alliance: Africa. This collaboration builds on Mastercard hosting U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo during AmCham in Nairobi in April for a “Digital Showcase” on best practices and lessons learned for building and scaling digital solutions across the continent of Africa.

EdTech Africa, a new partnership between the Government of Kenya, Kenyan President Ruto and the U.S., which builds on Mastercard’s existing multi-million-dollar investments with the Atlanta University Consortium (AUC) Data Science Initiative and Howard University’s Center for Applied Data Science & Analytics Initiative. This effort cultivates educational exchanges between Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and African scholars in the ever-evolving landscape of emerging technology and is an example of innovation, talent empowerment and cross-cultural connectivity across the African diaspora, poised to drive forward education and technology for young leaders of Africa and America.

A new partnership involving Mastercard Community Pass, the Co-operative Bank of Kenya, the Shell Foundation, and the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office that gives smallholder farmers access to a digital marketplace and enables affordable credit to buy clean energy tools that support farmers’ incomes, such as solar-powered irrigation pumps. First announced in January, the effort aligns to Mastercard’s involvement with two USAID initiatives: the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience (PREPARE) and the Women in the Digital Economy Fund (WiDEF).