en.Wedoany.com Reported - The Malagasy government and the World Bank held a working meeting earlier this week to review the progress of two strategic digital projects funded by the Bank—the Madagascar Digital and Energy Connectivity for Inclusive Project (DECIM) and the Madagascar Digital Governance and Identity Management Project (PRODIGY).
The DECIM project, with $400 million in funding, aims to double electricity coverage while providing internet access to an additional 3.4 million people. The project is now in full implementation, with 664,000 internet-enabled digital devices distributed and fiber optic networks being deployed; some health centers and schools have already been connected.
The PRODIGY project, with $143 million in funding, will host the national digital identity system through two data centers located in Tsimbazaza and Iavoloha. These data centers are powered by renewable energy to ensure continued operation during national grid outages, and construction work is underway.
The DECIM project remains in the implementation phase, while PRODIGY has entered its final stage. The government is currently focusing on consolidating project governance and completing administrative closure. During the meeting, Madagascar's Ministry of Digital Development, Posts and Telecommunications recommended stricter adherence to established performance indicators in field operations. The World Bank emphasized that both projects must be executed on schedule and meet planned disbursement targets. Given that the projects span multiple sectors—energy, digital, civil registration, and finance—the Ministry noted the need for enhanced coordination to eliminate administrative bottlenecks.
The PRODIGY project, launched in 2019 and led by the Administrative Efficiency Reform Program (PREA), aims to modernize identity and civil registration management. In Madagascar, one in four people lacks legal identity due to lack of access to civil registration services, and many national ID cards cannot be reliably verified due to the absence of a robust national database.
The DECIM project was approved by the World Bank Board of Directors on April 7, 2023, against the backdrop of the country's infrastructure penetration rate being among the lowest in sub-Saharan Africa and globally for an extended period. In 2020, only 33.7% of the population had access to electricity, below the sub-Saharan African average of 48.4%, ranking the country 13th globally in terms of population without electricity. The internet penetration rate was 22% in 2021, up from 5.1% in 2016 but still far below the regional average of 33% in sub-Saharan Africa; as of the end of 2025, Madagascar had 6.71 million internet users, with an internet penetration rate of 20.4%.
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