Global technology company Mastercard and the African Development Bank (AfDB) have launched a new alliance to extend digital access to critical services for 100-million individuals and businesses in Africa over the next ten years.

The Mobilising Access to the Digital Economy (MADE) Alliance: Africa will initially focus on supporting the agricultural sector and women.

A pilot programme will be launched later 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, with intentions to later expand to Uganda, Ethiopia, Ghana and the rest of the continent.

“Across Africa, people are driving new growth and opportunity, and Mastercard wants to support their success,” says Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach, noting that the alliance builds on the innovations and investments the company is already making with partners in 45 countries to enhance Africa’s digital infrastructure and accelerate inclusive growth.

The AfDB, which cochairs the initiative, will invest $300-million to support the alliance’s programmes, providing the funding for digital infrastructure and incentivising ecosystem stakeholders to enhance digital access.

Mastercard will, within five years, register 15-million users in Africa onto its Community Pass platform, which was launched in 2020, with interoperable digital infrastructure facilitating involvement from a range of ecosystem participants.

Community Pass is a social enterprise that digitises and connects remote, underserved communities to governments, nongovernmental organisations and the private sector.

“The AfDB believes that digitalisation through Mastercard Community Pass can play a vital role in increasing the adoption of agricultural technologies to help feed Africa, as well as improve incomes of millions of African smallholder farmers,” says AfDB Group president Dr Akinwumi Adesina.

“Joining the MADE Alliance: Africa will amplify and multiply the impact of the bank’s investments to build sustainable, climate- smart food systems across the continent.”

As an ecosystem of public- and private- sector partners is critical to enable more people to join the digital economy, more than half a dozen organisations have committed to participating in the MADE Alliance: Africa at launch, including Equity Bank, Microsoft, Heifer International, Unconnected.org and Syngenta Foundation.

Bringing together public- and private-sector leaders will create and enhance accessible, affordable and trusted technology and digital tools that are scalable, enabling more people to join the digital economy.

The alliance matches partners’ complementary strengths in key geographies to promote sustainable digital access and, together, will deliver connectivity, skilling, employment and digital access to financial and other critical services.

The efforts of the MADE Alliance: Africa will support the US Digital Transformation with Africa Initiative and the African Union’s Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa.

It also ties into other business objectives focused on Africa, including a memorandum of agreement with a US Department of Commerce bureau, the International Trade Administration, to advance digital access and inclusion in Africa based on a mutual desire to support the aims of the US government’s Digital Transformation with Africa Initiative and MADE Alliance: Africa.

It also aligns with EdTech Africa, which is a new partnership between the government of Kenya, Kenyan President William Ruto and the US, which builds on Mastercard’s existing multimillion-dollar investments with the Atlanta University Consortium Data Science Initiative and Howard University’s Centre for Applied Data Science and Analytics Initiative.

“This effort cultivates educational exchanges between historically black colleges and universities 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,” Mastercard notes.

Further, the alliance is aligned with a new partnership among Mastercard Community Pass, the Cooperative Bank of Kenya, the Shell Foundation and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, which provides smallholder farmers with access to a digital marketplace and enables affordable credit to buy clean energy tools that support farmers’ incomes, such as solar- powered irrigation pumps.

“This effort aligns to Mastercard’s involvement with two US Agency for International Development initiatives: the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience and the Women in the Digital Economy Fund.”