India has spent several years building international support for its Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and is now beginning to put this proposal into action in individual countries.
India’s co-development of a DigiLocker pilot with Kenya and its work on a foundational DigiLocker solution in Cuba suggest its DPI diplomacy is moving beyond declarations, workshops, and cooperation agreements. However, neither project yet proves India’s model can be replicated elsewhere. The harder test is whether these systems can adapt to local laws and institutions, earn public trust, and remain sustainable after initial development.
What Is Changing?
On 19 February 2026, India and Kenya signed an Implementation Framework Agreement for a DigiLocker pilot on the sidelines of the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi. India’s National e-Governance Division and Kenya’s Ministry of Information, Communications and the Digital Economy are co-developing the solution, which will be customised to Kenyan requirements under the Ministry of External Affairs’ Development Cooperation Programme.
The pilot aims to enable secure digital storage and real-time verification of official documents, reducing paperwork and making public services more accessible to citizens, students and businesses. The Kenya initiative builds on India’s wider digital cooperation with the Global South. India and Cuba signed an MoU in January 2024 to share successful digital solutions at population scale, and work has begun on a foundational DigiLocker solution in Cuba. With an Implementation Framework Agreement and Non-Disclosure Agreement now concluded with Kenya, India’s DPI experience is moving beyond domestic deployment to help other countries adapt similar digital capabilities to their needs.
Why Does It Matter?
India’s digital infrastructure has mostly been discussed as a domestic transformation story. It is now becoming part of how India engages with other countries.
DPI has allowed India to build digital systems at population scale around identity, payments and data exchange. What distinguishes the approach, according to the framework India advocates internationally, is the emphasis on scale, affordability, interoperability and public purpose.
That experience is increasingly positioned as something to share, not just replicate. NITI Aayog describes DPI as “shared digital capabilities” and highlights India’s experience as a “replicable pathway” for equitable digital transformation.
For India, this means the opportunity is no longer about exporting a single technology platform. It is about sharing capabilities and approaches that other countries can adapt to their own requirements.
The Kenya agreement matters because the DigiLocker solution is customised for Kenya. The proposition is to use India’s experience to help Kenya build its own digital infrastructure, not to reproduce an Indian system there.
That gives DPI a role beyond governance and service delivery. It can become an instrument of India’s technology diplomacy, particularly in the Global South.
India has worked to build international support around DPI. The G20’s Digital Economy Working Group involved extensive negotiations and bilateral engagement, with India and partners like the UNDP and World Bank helping mobilise support for a broader DPI framework.
The result was a push to establish DPI as a global public good. The next test is whether this international positioning can translate into functioning digital systems in partner countries.
What Happens Next?
The immediate test is implementation.
Kenya’s pilot and Cuba’s foundational DigiLocker solution will show whether India can move from sharing experience to helping build digital systems that work in different national contexts.
The larger question is whether these can become repeatable models rather than individual projects.
NITI Aayog’s shift from a “Project” to a “Product” mindset is relevant here. The aim is to build reusable digital capabilities rather than one-off systems. For DPI diplomacy, this could mean developing capabilities adaptable across countries instead of starting from scratch each time.
Data portability and verifiability could become more important. Secure, consent-based data sharing can allow people to prove identity, skills and eligibility across platforms. This is directly relevant to the future evolution of digital credentials and platforms such as DigiLocker.
If India can make this model work across different institutional and national contexts, its DPI experience could become more than a successful domestic model. It could become a practical tool for building long-term technology partnerships.
What Should India Do?
India should treat DPI cooperation as a long-term technology diplomacy capability, not just a collection of bilateral projects.
That means focusing on reusable digital capabilities adaptable to local requirements, while sharing the institutional and governance experience needed to make those systems work.
The objective should not be to make other countries copy India. It should be to help them build digital infrastructure that works for their citizens, while drawing on what India has learned at population scale.
India has already demonstrated that digital infrastructure can be built as a public capability rather than a closed platform. The next opportunity is to demonstrate that this experience can travel.
Kenya and Cuba may be in the early stages of that shift: India using what it has built at home as part of how it builds technological partnerships abroad.
India’s DPI diplomacy will not be judged by the number of MoUs it signs. It will be judged by whether partner countries can operate these systems independently, govern them under their own laws and use them to improve public services without creating new technological dependencies. Kenya and Cuba are therefore not simply showcases for Indian technology. They test whether India can turn digital capability into a credible and responsible model of development cooperation.
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Source Note:
This article draws primarily on NITI Aayog’s DPI@2047 for Viksit Bharat: A Strategic Roadmap to Enable Non-linear Inclusive Socio-economic Growth, which outlines India’s approach to building and sharing Digital Public Infrastructure as adaptable, interoperable digital capabilities. Details on the Kenya DigiLocker pilot, including the Implementation Framework Agreement, co-development and customisation to Kenyan requirements, are based on an ANI report published by The Tribune. Additional context on the progress of DigiLocker cooperation with Kenya and Cuba is drawn from a July 2026 PIB update.
Editorial Disclosure:
AI-assisted tools were used to help summarise and organise information from the source reports and to support language and copy-editing.