IOTA collaborates on ADAPT project: Building the future of digital trade in Africa

2025.11.17

IOTA collaborates on ADAPT project: Building the future of digital trade in Africa

IOTA is collaborating with the World Economic Forum and the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change on the ADAPT project. ADAPT is a pan-African digital trade initiative led by the African Continental Free Trade Area. ADAPT connects identity, data, and finance through digital public infrastructure to enable trusted, efficient, and inclusive trade across Africa.

2025.11.17 - 13:41:40

IOTAADAPT

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Africa stands at the tipping point of a trade transformation that could reshape its economic future. IOTA, in collaboration with several leading international organizations, is driving the digital flow of goods, data, and payments across the African continent to unlock tens of billions of dollars in new trade value and promote inclusive economic growth.

This initiative, known as ADAPT (African Continental Free Trade Area Digital Access and Public Infrastructure for Trade), integrates seamless payments, secure data access, and digital identity into a unified digital public infrastructure, enabling African nations to trade with greater security, transparency, and efficiency.

Once fully implemented, ADAPT aims to achieve the following:

By 2035, connect all African countries to trade on a unified open digital infrastructure;
By 2035, double intra-African trade, unlocking over $70 billion in additional annual trade value;
Generate $23.6 billion in annual economic benefits through faster, lower-cost trade;
Reduce border clearance times from up to 14 days to under 3 days;
Lower cross-border payment fees from 6%–9% to below 3%.

To understand how ADAPT will deliver these impacts, it’s essential to first examine why Africa’s trade systems need a digital foundation—and how this initiative unlocks that potential.

Unlocking Africa's Trade Potential

Africa has a population of 1.5 billion and a combined GDP exceeding $3 trillion, making it home to the world’s largest free trade area. Yet, despite its scale, intra-African trade accounts for only 17% of total trade—far below the over 60% seen in regions like Asia and Europe.

Africa’s trade potential is constrained by structural inefficiencies. The lack of trusted digital identities or secure data exchange mechanisms leads to information silos. Paper-based documentation slows logistics, extending border clearance times. Cross-border payments can take weeks and cost up to 9%, draining around $25 billion annually from Africa’s economy. Additionally, an $81 billion trade finance gap limits capital access for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

These barriers result in inefficient supply chains, delays, and a lack of trust—all of which can be eliminated through digital public infrastructure. ADAPT provides the platform to make this possible, and IOTA is proud to be a founding partner.

Led by the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat, IOTA, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, and the World Economic Forum are jointly advancing ADAPT to position African trade as a global benchmark for digital innovation.

Sir Tony Blair, Founder and Executive Chairman of the Tony Blair Institute, said:

We are proud to co-design and implement this new ADAPT platform with the AfCFTA Secretariat, the IOTA Foundation, and numerous public and private partners. Through our teams across 17 African countries, we will provide on-the-ground support and bring world-class technology and financial resources to ensure Africa’s single digital market is rooted in Africa and connected globally.

The Digital Core of ADAPT

ADAPT supports AfCFTA’s goals through three interconnected layers—identity, data, and finance. It will create:

Trusted digital identities: Businesses and governments will gain secure, self-sovereign digital identities using decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials, integrated with national ID systems such as Kenya’s eCitizen and Nigeria’s NIMC.
Cross-border data exchange: ADAPT will establish a single source of truth for trade documents and logistics information, leveraging smart contracts, AI-driven compliance checks, and IoT-based cargo tracking to cut border clearance times by more than half.
Interoperable financial layer: By connecting mobile money, banks, stablecoins like USDT, and digital currencies into one network, ADAPT will reduce clearance times and transaction costs.

Together, these layers unlock billions of dollars in trade financing for SMEs, enhance security and transparency, and ensure trusted information moves in sync with physical goods.

As Chido Munyati, Head of Africa at the World Economic Forum, stated:

ADAPT marks a major milestone in advancing free trade and economic development in Africa. Trade inefficiencies remain a key barrier to business growth, and digitizing trade processes will fundamentally transform how African economies connect and collaborate.

The Engine: Open-Source Digital Public Infrastructure

ADAPT’s technological vision leverages emerging technologies—including IOTA’s public blockchain network—to enable interoperability between existing national systems, industry platforms, and digital services.

As a founding partner, IOTA contributes technical expertise and support to build and integrate ADAPT on the IOTA network. This technology transforms every shipment, document, and transaction into verifiable digital data, enabling frictionless cross-border movement and revolutionizing trade.

With experience developing TLIP and TWIN solutions in Kenya, IOTA is uniquely positioned to serve as a strategic partner for the ADAPT initiative.

By building a unified, blockchain-based digital public infrastructure, Africa will establish a single source of truth for seamless cross-border commerce:

Every step of the supply chain—from import/export certificates and invoices to all other trade documents—will be fully digital, authenticated, and tamper-proof;
In-transit goods can be cleared efficiently at borders, significantly improving speed while reducing delays and costs;
Tokenization of physical assets such as commodities and critical minerals will give African businesses access to better, low-cost trade financing;
Payments via stablecoins like USDT and other digital currencies will enable faster, lower-cost settlements for cross-border trade and financing.

This technology ensures all participants have access to the same trusted data, enhancing coordination, accountability, and confidence across the entire trade process.

This technology has already been successfully piloted with public institutions and private enterprises in Kenya, Rwanda, the UK, and the Netherlands.

Implementation Roadmap

The rollout of ADAPT will occur in three phases:

2025–2026: Pilot programs in three countries, including Kenya and Ghana;
From 2026: Expansion to more member states, establishing legal, technical, and governance frameworks;
2027–2035: Full-scale deployment across all African nations.

Each phase invites investors, innovators, and development partners to deepen collaboration and strengthen the foundations of Africa’s digital trade economy. ADAPT is actively engaging—and welcomes—additional partners such as Visa.

For inquiries, contact ADAPT-inquiries@institute.global.

IOTA’s Commitment to Africa’s Digital Future

While ADAPT is the flagship collaboration, it represents just one part of IOTA’s broader commitment to Africa’s digital transformation. Over the next four years, we will:

Hire over 40 experts across Africa to strengthen IOTA and partner organizations;
Build and expand decentralized infrastructure to develop local digital trade capabilities;
Empower a new generation of African innovators through dedicated events, hackathons, and university partnerships;
Launch trade finance solutions tailored for African markets;
Expand digital payments and stablecoin applications to support faster, low-cost cross-border settlements.

Through these efforts, IOTA aims to serve as foundational infrastructure that enables Africa’s journey toward digital and sustainable economic growth.

Dominik Schiener, Co-Founder and Chairman of the IOTA Foundation, said:

The success of distributed ledger technology in pilot projects in Kenya and Rwanda clearly shows that Africa is ready for these transformative solutions. The continent is setting a global example—unlocking immense economic potential, creating a fairer playing field for millions of businesses, and providing new financing opportunities.

By providing a decentralized backbone for trade data, IOTA’s technology supports the creation of a unified market built on trust, security, and openness.

Want to learn more? Join our AMA session on Tuesday, November 19 at 11:00 PM Beijing Time, where Dominik Schiener and special guests will share further details. Participants can submit questions live or in advance via X.

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