The African Development Bank Group and Mastercard have launched the Mobilizing Access to the Digital Economy (MADE) Alliance: Africa. Over the next 10 years, the Alliance aims to provide digital access to critical services for Africa’s 100 million people and businesses.
The Alliance will initially focus on supporting the agricultural sector and women. This year, a pilot program will be launched to help three million farmers in Kenya, Tanzania, and Nigeria. The Alliance plans to expand to other African countries.
The African Development Bank Group will invest $300 million to support Alliance programs, and Mastercard will register 15 million users in Africa on its Community Pass platform.
More than half a dozen organizations, including Equity Bank, Microsoft, Heifer International, Unconnected.org, and Syngenta Foundation, have joined the MADE Alliance: Africa. The alliance’s efforts will support the U.S. Digital Transformation with Africa Initiative and the African Union’s Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa.
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., 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. It 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.
