Marcelo Vieira, Partner, KPMG South Africa and Darren Lentz, Digital Trust Lead, KPMG.
Digital trust is the invisible contract that lets people, businesses and governments rely on digital systems for critical interactions. Without it, digital public infrastructure (DPI) – the shared digital rails for payments, identity and data exchange – cannot scale or deliver the economic and social value it promises. DPI enables societies to operate digitally at scale; digital trust ensures these systems are secure, reliable, private and governed fairly.
According to Marcelo Vieira, Partner at KPMG South Africa, digital trust generally is associated with an organisation’s ability to protect and defend against cyber threats. However, this should not be viewed as a siloed cyber security agenda or a technical add-on, but as business enabler for a trusted digital economy.
“Digital trust in the context of DPI is about creating an ecosystem where government, businesses and citizens can exchange data securely and confidently,” he says. “It comes down to knowing that the person or organisation you’re interacting with is who they claim to be, and that the data being exchanged is reliable.”
At the heart of DPI is a ‘set of foundational digital systems’, says the United Nations Development Programme, and these systems are designed to reduce the risk of fragmented trust.[1] It is a practical framework that supports the development of digital trust at scale using modular solutions and proven strategies that are re-usable and relevant and avoid the risk of operating within, or creating, siloed systems.
There are three pillars within DPI – digital identity, secure data exchange and interoperable platforms. Together, these pillars allow societies to digitise essential services with trust. In practical terms, this trust is built digitally with verifiable digital identities, strong authentication, consent-based data sharing and non-repudiation.
Vieira explains that without a trusted, foundational digital identity, all other digital services remain fragile. “You cannot build a trusted digital economy without an identity layer that everyone can rely on,” he says. “That identity must sit within a robust trust framework supported by strong cryptography and public key infrastructure that provides assurance.”
Darren Lentz, Digital Trust Lead at KPMG, points out that there are several countries already far along in this journey. “Europe, India, Singapore and Brazil have all moved in this direction,” he says. “In many of these countries, digital identity is ingrained in government services and expanded into banking, telecoms and the private sector.”
As artificial intelligence becomes embedded in more services, DPI provides the trusted data, identity and governance layers that responsible AI depends on. Verified data inputs, accountable access and transparent consent flows create the foundation for AI systems that are safe, fair and auditable. While digital trust is often discussed in public sector terms, there are also significant business applications. Lentz believes that trusted digital identity can reduce onboarding friction, compliance costs and data storage risks for organisations.
“If you can rely on a verified digital credential, onboarding a customer can take minutes instead of weeks,” he says. “There should no longer be a need to store copies of ID documents or proof of address or payslips across multiple systems, and this alone significantly and directly reduces the regulatory burden. Verified credentials put individuals in control of their data,” he adds. “Organisations request only what they need, and customers share only what they consent to – improving compliance and reducing the organisation’s exposure to data breaches by reducing the amount of PII data processed and stored.”
This granular level of digital identity ensures that personal data remains under the control of the individual and is only shared with consent. This approach also helps solve long-standing business challenges such as fragmented customer records, allowing companies to maintain a single source of truth of their customers. The customer becomes the source, and the company gains an accurate view that simplifies data accuracy and verification.
Beyond national systems, DPI unlocks regional and cross‑border interoperability, allowing countries to transact, share data and authenticate individuals across borders with confidence. For Africa, this could be a catalyst for easier trade, improved remittances and seamless movement of people and services across the continent.
Africa needs to follow its own path to trust, building solutions designed for local realities. Every country has its own constraints and its own areas of excellence. As Lentz points out, while South Africa has a long-standing civil registration process backed by a centralised national population register, challenges such as connectivity, device access and data affordability must shape how DPI should be designed. The country is already taking steps towards DPI through initiatives led by government and the Presidency, but Vieira stresses that progress needs to be anchored in a clear national governance and trust framework driving a clear and trusted ecosystem.
“This is progressing faster than people realise,” Vieira concludes. “If we get the foundations right, digital trust will drive inclusion, protect citizens and create confidence in digital services – ultimately shaping how South Africa and the continent participate in the digital economy.”
[1] https://www.undp.org/digital/digital-public-infrastructure
