Who We Are

“Co-Develop unlocks the catalytic possibilities of safe, inclusive, and equitable shared digital infrastructure”

Co-Develop is a global, nonprofit fund accelerating the adoption of safe and inclusive shared digital public infrastructure (DPI) at scale. Answering the call to promote the deployment of DPI in 50 countries building DPI in the next five years, Co-Develop makes strategic investments to:

  • Unlock bottlenecks in safe and inclusive DPI adoption by countries

  • Build an evidence base to understand the impact of DPI

We operate on the ethos that, together with like-minded partners, we must “co-develop” the foundations for a fairer future.

  • Co-Develop's origin is rooted in the urgent needs - and catalytic possibilities - of the 21st century.

    Countries that were able to use digital databases and trusted data sharing to identify beneficiaries reached on average 51 percent of their population, while countries that had to rely on collecting new information from beneficiaries and couldn’t rely on existing databases to cross-reference either, reached on average only 16 percent of their population. In particular, countries that leveraged digital systems both for the registration and payment process, reached the highest proportion of the population—an average of 55 percent according to the World Bank. All these countries also had high ID coverage, which facilitated matching and cross-referencing across existing datasets, as well as account opening wherever these were used.

    This realization on the part of many countries has led to a surge in requests to global organizations and aid agencies for assistance in thinking through how to build such population-scale systems. These systems that countries are seeking to build are broadly called “Digital Public Infrastructure”, or “DPI” for short. As organizations began receiving more such requests, many started exchanging notes on the best ways to help countries make choices that focused on inclusion, safeguards, and equity.

  • Our goal is to enable countries to accelerate the adoption of a shared infrastructure approach that is inclusive, safe, and equitable. We do this through

    1) making investments that unlock bottlenecks in developing solutions using a shared infrastructure approach

    2) demonstrating early successes; and

    3) focusing on inclusion and safety as core tenets of the digital transformation journey of countries

    The increased adoption of leveraging shared digital infrastructure should create a virtuous cycle for the entire development ecosystem.