From Promise to Progress: Celebrating the Inaugural 50-in-5 Awards – Impact
Welcome to From Promise to Progress: Celebrating the Inaugural 50-in-5 Awards, a three-part blog series highlighting the countries and individuals driving transformative digital public infrastructure around the world.
What can countries achieve when they use digital public infrastructure to build stronger economies and more resilient communities? In 2023, the 50-in-5 campaign was launched to help bring countries together to implement safe, inclusive and interoperable digital public infrastructure (DPI). The goal of the campaign is to enable 50 countries to design, implement, and scale at least one component of their DPI by 2028.
Today, 41 countries are part of the growing 50-in-5 community, drawing from one another’s experiences, sharing knowledge and technology, building on what works and learning together from what doesn’t. Over the past three years, participating countries have come together through workshops, roundtables, ministerial meetings, and peer learning exchanges to share lessons and best practices in DPI. In 2026 alone, countries participated in 24 virtual and in-person events, including learning programs on evolving DPI safeguards and the integration of AI into DPI implementation. These exchanges are helping bring the vision of 50-in-5 to life, creating a space for governments and partners to accelerate implementation, reduce costs, and sustain the momentum of their digital transformation efforts.
At the halfway point of the campaign, the inaugural 50-in-5 Awards recognise the countries and people delivering real-world progress through DPI. Across the categories of Impact, Collaboration, and Leadership, the Awards highlight the individuals, partnerships, and innovations behind DPI implementations that are helping build stronger economies and improve the well-being of people.
“Keep people and real-world impact at the center of your DPI implementations, remembering that it is an enabler, not the goal in itself. Share what you’re learning so others can benefit, and invest in the people and solutions—including digital public goods—needed to sustain this work. Through 50-in-5, we can work together to accelerate safe, inclusive, and interoperable DPI around the world,” shared Jon Lloyd, Director of Advocacy and 50-in-5, DPGA Secretariat.
This year’s honorees exemplify what effective DPI looks like in practice and why cooperation matters, particularly at a time of geopolitical uncertainty and rapid technological change. Let us meet the people and countries behind these achievements.
Impact | Service Delivery at Scale
Impact Award: “From Identity to Inclusion: Building a Connected Digital Nation”, ASIN – Agence des Systèmes d’Information et du Numérique, Republic of Benin
Beyond the technology, DPI is most valuable when it improves access to services and delivers practical benefits for people. The Impact Award recognises countries using DPI to improve access to services, expand opportunities, and deliver tangible benefits to people.
This year’s winner, Benin, has built an integrated DPI ecosystem connecting digital identity to be interoperable with other public services. The country’s approach goes beyond registering people in a digital system. The focus has been on enabling citizens to securely access services, opportunities, and support that can improve their lives and livelihoods.
Today, nearly 13.75 million people, representing approximately 99 percent of the population, are registered in Benin’s digital identity system.
The impact is already visible. More than 1.18 million criminal record extracts have been delivered digitally, reducing the time and travel needed to obtain a document often required for employment and other administrative processes. Benin has also demonstrated a strong commitment to inclusion, with more than 72 percent of registered individuals living in rural areas – which have historically been harder to reach and underserved.
Benin’s experience shows how DPI can expand access to services and opportunities for millions of people, including underserved communities.
“We must ensure that people who use digital public infrastructure trust the systems we propose. People do not use a system because it is sophisticated, they use it because it is simple and because they are confident their data is secure. At the end of the day, technology scales only if trust scales. We are focused on creating the conditions to ensure people truly adopt the services we propose,” said Marc-André Loko, Director General, The Information Systems and Digital Technology Agency, Republic of Benin.
Collaboration Runner-Up: West Africa Unique Identification for Regional Integration and Inclusion (WURI) – Phase 2, Ministry of Public Service Efficiency and Digital Transformation, Republic of Togo
Togo was named runner-up for the second phase of the West Africa Unique Identification for Regional Integration and Inclusion (WURI) programme, which is expanding access to trusted identification and public services.
What’s Next
Across the globe, we are seeing champions of digital public goods turn the promise of DPI into real outcomes. From expanding access to services in Benin, to strengthening regional cooperation in Indonesia, to advancing people-centered leadership in Brazil, these stories show that the vision behind 50-in-5 is no longer an aspiration. It is already becoming a reality, improving lives and creating opportunities for millions of people.
As the inaugural 50-in-5 Awards showed, sustaining this momentum will take continued commitment. Countries must keep people’s experiences at the centre of DPI, share practical lessons, explore reusing technology, and invest in the people and digital public goods behind lasting progress. Measuring real-world outcomes will help countries build on what works and address the challenges that remain.
As the campaign reaches its halfway point, this year’s honorees offer examples of what is possible, along with helpful takeaways for countries at every stage of their DPI journeys. We look forward to seeing what they achieve next—and to celebrating more of that progress at the 2027 50-in-5 Awards.