Kenya, Morocco, and Nigeria have been selected as the first three countries to implement ADAPT, a digital infrastructure initiative built to support intra-African trade by combining digital identity, cross-border data exchange, and interoperable payments.
ADAPT, which stands for Africa Digital Access and Public Infrastructure for Trade, was launched in November of last year as an effort to give the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) the shared digital systems that cross-border commerce depends on. The initiative is led by the AfCFTA Secretariat and developed with the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, the World Economic Forum, and the IOTA Foundation.
The three pilot countries were chosen against criteria including political commitment, regulatory readiness, the maturity of existing digital infrastructure, and private-sector engagement. In each country, ADAPT is intended to connect three layers: digital identity systems that establish who a trading party is, cross-border data exchange that lets trade documentation move between jurisdictions, and interoperable payments that allow value to settle across national systems.
Immediate priorities for the implementations include establishing national country forums, enabling live cross-border data exchange, digitizing trade documentation that is still largely paper-based, and testing regulatory frameworks for digital currencies, including stablecoins, as a settlement option. The work is structured so that identity, data, and payment components are treated as connected public infrastructure rather than separate national projects.
“Africa has a unique opportunity to leapfrog fragmented, paper-based trade systems and establish digital trust infrastructure designed for the future,” said Dominik Schiener, Co-Founder and Chair of the IOTA Foundation.
The initiative is aimed at a measurable gap. Small and medium-sized enterprises account for up to 90 percent of African businesses, and the initiative’s backers cite an annual trade finance gap of around 100 billion dollars, constrained by fragmented regulatory systems and costly payment networks. Reliable digital identity for businesses and individuals is a prerequisite for closing that gap, since cross-border lenders and counterparties need to verify who they are transacting with.
ADAPT runs alongside a wave of national digital identity development across the continent, including Somalia’s launch of three foundational digital ID systems and South Africa’s multi-agency digital ID platform. ADAPT’s distinction is that it treats identity as one pillar of a cross-border trade layer rather than a domestic service alone.
Sources: IOTA Foundation, AfCFTA Secretariat
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By Ali Nassar-Smith
