Digital public infrastructure (DPI) holds great potential in strengthening increasingly digitalised tax administration, but important questions persist on how to fully unlock this potential for governments in low-income countries.
Drawing from their work under recently concluded DIGITAX Research Programme of the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD), based at IDS, Research Fellow Fabrizio Santoro and Research Officer Celeste Scarpini shared key findings and lessons learnt on the matter during an IDS internal seminar last week.
Santoro and Scarpini discussed how various DPI components – digital ID, digital payments, and data exchange systems – are being used in African tax administrations as well as the challenges that come with their adoption, and likewise identified further areas of research.
They were joined by Caroline Khene, lead of IDS’ Digital and Technology Cluster, who discussed the broader fundamental issues concerning digitalisation reforms in governments and how these link back to the potential of DPI. The seminar was chaired by ICTD Research Director Martin Hearson.
Watch it here:
DIGITAX was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Read research produced under the programme here.
