April 9, 2026
Open Cities Lab joins the Digital Public Goods Alliance
Author: DPGA Secretariat
The Digital Public Goods Alliance is pleased to welcome Open Cities Lab (OCL) as its newest member, with the announcement taking place yesterday during the African Urban Forum, marking an important step forward in advancing locally led, inclusive, and sustainable digital public infrastructure. This milestone reflects a shared commitment to strengthening digital public goods as foundational tools for improving public service delivery, accountability, and civic participation.
Open Cities Lab’s membership in the Alliance highlights its role as an implementation focused organisation working across Africa to deploy open, interoperable, and adaptable digital systems. By collaborating directly with governments, practitioners, and civic actors, OCL brings practical experience in ensuring that digital transformation efforts are grounded in real institutional contexts and designed for long term public value.
As part of its engagement with the Alliance, Open Cities Lab contributes to the DPGA roadmap through three key areas of work spanning policy and advocacy, capacity building, and technical implementation. These efforts include strengthening African led adoption of digital public infrastructure, supporting local governments to sustainably adopt digital public goods, and developing open source civic infrastructure that enhances transparency and accountability.
Together, these activities reflect Open Cities Lab’s broader commitment to advancing DPI that is practical and responsive to local needs. By focusing on implementation and real world application, the organisation contributes to building systems that governments can govern, sustain, and evolve over time.
As Joanne Parker, CEO of Open Cities Lab, stated:
“Joining the Digital Public Goods Alliance is an important milestone for Open Cities Lab. We believe digital public infrastructure should be open, practical, and grounded in real implementation contexts. Through this membership, we look forward to contributing African implementation experience to the global digital public goods ecosystem and continuing to support governments to build systems they can govern, sustain, and evolve over time”.
Highlighting the importance of this collaboration, Liv Marte Nordhaug, CEO of the DPGA Secretariat, noted:
“Open Cities Lab brings valuable, implementation focused contributions to the Digital Public Goods Alliance. Their work advancing African led DPI adoption, strengthening local government capacity, and building open civic infrastructure reflects the kind of practical, locally grounded approach needed to make digital public goods sustainable”.
To learn more about Open Cities Lab joining the DPGA, visit their announcement.
To learn more about the activities they will be undertaking as part of their DPGA membership, visit the Roadmap.
