The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) at Cambridge Judge Business School has launched a multi-year program to help governments in low- and middle-income countries build effective regulatory frameworks for digital identity systems.
The Cambridge DPI Regulatory Programme: Digital Identity is led by Financial Innovation for Impact (Fii) in partnership with CCAF, with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The initiative targets eight countries where digital identity infrastructure is at a pivotal development stage: Ethiopia, Uganda, Nigeria and Kenya in Africa, and India, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand in Asia.
The program is designed to support public authorities, including central banks, ministries of finance and digital transformation, data protection agencies, and telecommunications regulators, as they navigate decisions around designing and deploying national identity systems. Key challenges addressed include governance model selection, interoperability standards, liability frameworks, and managing data protection risks while enabling e-KYC innovation. A recent UK survey found regulatory fragmentation to be the primary obstacle to cross-border digital identity adoption, highlighting the urgency of coordinated approaches across jurisdictions.
“This programme generates comparative insights while engaging directly with policymakers to navigate trade-offs, institutional design and adoption challenges of digital ID,” said Pavle Avramovic, Director of Research and Policy at Financial Innovation for Impact. “By connecting research to practice, it enables countries to build secure, inclusive and trusted digital identity systems that reflect their governance realities and change lives.”
The program has two core components. The first will produce four flagship reports covering global regulatory architectures and governance models; high-impact digital identity use cases; regional e-KYC adoption through country case studies; and an economic analysis of efficiency gains tied to digital identity deployment. Countries such as Nigeria, where the World Bank expanded the digital ID target to 180 million enrollees, and Ethiopia, where the Fayda national digital ID system launched with a target of 90 million citizens by 2027, represent the types of programs the initiative will analyze.
The second component establishes a Regulatory Knowledge Ecosystem, providing a knowledge hub, annual surveys, a cross-regulatory advisory panel, and international partnerships to sustain policy engagement beyond the report publication cycle.
The initiative launched with a webinar on March 3, 2026. Countries participating span a range of identity architectures, from centralized to federated models, and from foundational to functional ID systems. The program aims to generate an empirical basis for policy decisions, equipping regulators with tools to design systems that are secure, interoperable, and inclusive.
Sources: Cambridge Judge Business School
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
