Global South Nations Tapping India’s Experience To Build DPI Ecosystem: Bill Gates

Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates has lauded India’s digital public infrastructure (DPI), underlining that countries across the Global South are leveraging India’s experience to build their DPI systems.

India’s ingenuity is not only helping Indians but the whole world, Gates said as he inaugurated the first-ever India Independence Day celebrations of the newly-opened Indian Consulate in Seattle.

On the occasion of the nation’s 78th Independence Day, Gates hailed India as a “global leader with breakthrough innovations” in areas such as technology, agriculture and healthcare, PTI reported.

Gates’ comments come at a time when India has catapulted to the world’s third largest fintech economy, driven by rise in adoption of digital payment systems like UPI and other financial services brought about by the DPI.

The Economic Survey 2023-24 recently highlighted that India aims to become a ‘fintech nation’ –  housing the highest number of fintech companies in the world – by piggybacking on its DPI mechanism.

It was also earlier reported that India has called for global adoption of DPI for increasing productivity, financial inclusion and sustainable growth.

While presenting the Union Budget 2024-25, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman last month proposed large-scale DPI applications for key sectors such as credit, ecommerce, education, health law and justice, logistics, MSME delivery and urban governance.

India also plans to use DPIs for the agriculture sector, expanding its coverage to farmers and their lands over the next three years. 

Titled ‘Report of India’s G20 Task Force on Digital Public Infrastructure’, the document claimed India has leapfrogged financial inclusion and traditional stages of development, by achieving what ought to have taken it five decades in just under 10 years.

Electronics and IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw earlier said that the central government will adopt a DPI-based approach for artificial intelligence development in India, similar to the approaches used in the healthcare, logistics, and payments sectors.

Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.