Use Cases Evolving Into Building Blocks
Event Highlights
Overview
The Global DPI Summit 2025, held in Cape Town from 4 to 6 November, was themed “DPI in Practice: Implementing Tomorrow’s Digital Society Today.” The Summit brought together more than 700 participants, including government representatives, multilaterals, funders, researchers and practitioners from across the globe, to exchange experiences and advance collaboration on digital public infrastructure (DPI).
Kalpa Impact, in partnership with the Centre for Digital Public Infrastructure (CDPI) and Co-Develop, hosted the event Use Cases Evolving into Building Blocks. The workshop explored how DPI can move from concept to implementation, helping countries address real challenges through digital solutions that serve people and communities.
Workshop Highlights
Kalpa Impact designed and facilitated the session to create a focused and practical dialogue. Participants were guided through identifying country-level challenges and applying the +1 approach using the DPI Use Cases Explorer, a live resource mapping real-world DPI examples to proven digital building blocks.
The workshop drew participation from government officials, funders, multilateral organisations, researchers and technology providers. Representatives from Mozambique and Rwanda shared their experiences of localising DPI, highlighting the importance of interoperability, institutional readiness and coordination.
Participants discussed how existing solutions could be adapted to their national contexts in groups. The discussions highlighted the possibility of pairing existing building blocks with governance, policy alignment, and local capacity.
Key Takeaways
- A strong starting point: Participants agreed that while lasting solutions take time, the workshop, especially the way it was designed, served as a practical first step to surface shared challenges and possible pathways forward
- Building on what exists: The +1 approach showed that progress is achievable by adapting proven DPI building blocks rather than reinventing the wheel
- Power of examples: Exploring the DPI Use Cases Explorer helped participants identify relevant, real-world solutions and see what has already worked in other regions
- Collaboration is essential: The session underscored the importance of working together across governments, funders, and ecosystem partners to make DPI implementation effective
- Grounded insights: Contributions from government representatives and practitioners added depth and revealed layers of challenges and opportunities often missed in broader discussions
About the DPI Use Cases Explorer
The DPI Use Cases Explorer, developed by Kalpa Impact supported by Co-Develop, is a growing resource that showcases real world DPI implementation examples that help meet citizen needs. It covers examples from across sectors such as social protection, agriculture and health. The current beta version includes 130 examples from more than 50 countries, based on over 25 research reports and 32 interviews.
Users can search by sector, country or DPI component, bookmark and export examples, and contribute their inputs and additions to strengthen the data showcased in the Explorer.
Explore the resource: https://www.dpiexplorer.org/
