India-Nigeria Digital Public Infrastructure Pact: A New Chapter in South-South Cooperation

India and Nigeria have formalized a significant partnership through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) focused on cooperation in Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). This agreement facilitates the sharing of India’s successful 'India Stack'—which includes biometric identity systems like Aadhaar and real-time payment interfaces like UPI—to help Nigeria build a robust digital ecosystem. The collaboration aims to enhance public service delivery, promote financial inclusion, and strengthen digital governance in Africa’s most populous nation. For Nigeria, the adoption of DPI principles offers a transformative path toward reducing leakages in government welfare schemes through Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT) and bringing millions of unbanked citizens into the formal financial fold. For India, this move is a strategic masterstroke in digital diplomacy. By offering open-source, scalable, and cost-effective technology solutions, India presents an alternative to the proprietary and often expensive digital models of the West, as well as the data-centralized models of other global powers.