Building Mzansi Xchange: Open Source Approaches to Secure Data Exchange in South Africa's Digital Public Infrastructure

South Africa’s digital future depends on robust, scalable, and inclusive Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). My talk introduces the core components and foundational principles of DPI, highlighting the latest directions in the South African Digital Transformation Roadmap, as unveiled by The Presidency. We’ll discuss why governments globally—including South Africa—are embracing Open Source solutions to reduce vendor lock-in, foster innovation, and ensure transparency, while exploring local challenges around adoption, interoperability, security, and compliance with regulations like POPIA.

The heart of my session is a real-world use case: building Mzansi Xchange, a secure, national data exchange platform co-designed with government and built primarily on Open Source software. We’ll unpack the architectural choices, implementation milestones, and hands-on lessons the project team learned, from aligning with the National Data and Cloud Policy to establishing federated data governance and deploying secure Open Source software.