On 12 November 2025, at the Transform Africa Summit in Conakry, the existence of Smart Africa Data Exchange (SADX) was unveiled: a system for cross-border data exchange owned by Smart Africa.
Five days later, at a closed side-event at the B20 Summit in Johannesburg, the Africa Digital Access and Public Infrastructure for Trade (ADAPT) was launched: a system for cross-border data exchange owned by the secretariat of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
SADX announced a pilot with Benin, Ghana and Rwanda in November.
ADAPT announced a pilot with Kenya, Morocco and Nigeria in May 2026.
SADX is supported by the Data Governance in Africa initiative (an EU project with input from Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France and Germany). It is based on X-Road technology with development being led by Ascend Digital Solutions, a Ghanaian tech company.
ADAPT is being driven by the Tony Blair Global Institute, the World Economic Forum and the IOTA Foundation. It utilises the Trade Worldwide Information Network (TWIN) which is built on IOTA blockchain technology. IOTA is simultaneously a non-profit technology foundation and the custodian of a live cryptocurrency. TWIN’s software code is open source, but its underlying ledger infrastructure runs on IOTA’s network.
Smart Africa is a multi-stakeholder alliance whose founding manifesto was endorsed by all African Union Heads of State. The AU Commission is a partner within the Alliance.
The AfCFTA Secretariat is a functionally autonomous body within the African Union system with its own legal personality, established by the AU Assembly to coordinate implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area.
The African Union’s Digital Transformation Strategy contains a SWOT analysis. Weakness number one:
Weak coordination among continental institutions pursuing the digitalization agenda of the continent. This deficiency must be addressed immediately, otherwise the project is already destined to fail even before being implemented.
The purpose of the strategy couldn’t be clearer:
To leverage the strengths and address the current lack of a common digital coordination framework, the AU Commission is coordinating the development and formulation of the Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa to guide a common, coordinated digitalization agenda, enhance synergies and avoid duplication of effort.
So what is going on?