Co-Develop and CAF Partner to Scale Digital Public Infrastructure Across Latin America and the Caribbean
The partnership aims to help countries move beyond isolated digital projects toward shared, interoperable, and reusable systems, with a particular focus on subnational governments.
Santiago, Chile, September 15, 2026: Co-Develop and CAF, a multilateral development bank in Latin America and the Caribbean, today signed a Memorandum of Understanding to accelerate the development of digital public infrastructure (DPI) across the region and expand the reach of digital public services to millions of people.
The agreement was signed at the International Forum "Digitalizar para Transformar," hosted by CAF in Santiago, Chile.
The Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region has been heavily investing in digitalization for years with tangible successes. However, some of these investments have produced systems that do not communicate with one another, are rebuilt from scratch in every sector, and fail to reach the territories where service gaps are widest. The DPI approach offers a way forward: foundational digital capabilities, such as identity, payments, and data exchange, built once and reused many times across multiple sectors and levels of government.
Co-Develop is a global nonprofit fund that makes catalytic investments to overcome barriers to DPI adoption and build evidence of its impact. CAF brings long-standing relationships with countries across the region, financing capacity, and reach into both national and subnational governments. Together, the two institutions will support countries in designing, financing and scaling digital infrastructure that responds to their own priorities.
The joint work will focus on sectors where DPI can make a measurable difference in people's lives, including agriculture, land registry, health, social protection and climate resilience. The partnership will place particular emphasis on subnational governments, a level historically underserved by digital transformation agendas and where much of actual service delivery takes place.
Built on safeguards, not good intentions
Scaling digital systems that touch entire populations requires managing the real risks of exclusion, surveillance, and capture. The partnership therefore embeds internationally recognized safeguards by design: multi-stakeholder governance, open standards, data protection, and accountability mechanisms.
Co-Develop and CAF will also adapt diagnostic and measurement tools to the specific conditions of the region to identify gaps, prioritize investments, and track progress with comparable data. The partnership will further convene regional exchanges among governments, the private sector, civil society and development partners, so that lessons learned in one country are used to advance digital impact in others.
About Co-Develop
Co-Develop is a global nonprofit fund that supports countries in building inclusive, secure, and interoperable digital public infrastructure. Through strategic investments and technical support, Co-Develop works to ensure digital transformation delivers public value at scale, including across the 33 countries in the LAC region.
Learn more about Co-Develop’s DPI initiatives at www.codevelop.fund, and if you want to know more about Co-Develop’s strategy in Latin America and the Caribbean, reach out to aura@codevelop.fund