New institutions established after Council of Ministers deliberations aim to consolidate fragmented public systems, regulate artificial intelligence, and connect millions of citizens to government services online.
MAPUTO — Mozambique has taken a significant institutional step toward the digital age, establishing a dedicated national agency to lead its digital transformation agenda and a new body to govern the country’s use of artificial intelligence. The announcements, made following a Council of Ministers meeting by government spokesperson and Minister of State Administration Inocêncio Impissa, mark one of the most ambitious overhauls of the country’s technology governance infrastructure in recent memory.
The moves come as the country grapples with one of Africa’s most significant digital divides: only about 25 percent of Mozambicans currently have access to the internet, and the country ranked 177th out of 193 nations in the United Nations 2024 E-Government Development Index — well below regional and global averages.
A New Engine for Digital Government
At the centre of the announcement is the Digital Transformation and Innovation Agency, known by its Portuguese acronym ATDI. The body will operate under the Ministry of Communications and Digital Transformation and will be tasked with coordinating and advancing the country’s digital modernization — overseeing improvements to public service delivery and, critically, creating a single, unified government database where today fragmented and siloed systems operate.
“Currently, each sector or department of the ministries has its own computer systems and databases, which operate in isolation from other sectors of the public administration,” Impissa told journalists after the meeting. “It will aggregate all the databases that exist in the public administration and will organise them in more suitable locations. We will have a single database.”
Central to ATDI’s mandate will be the launch of a Citizen Portal — a one-stop digital gateway through which Mozambicans will be able to access services ranging from digital identity and civil registration to tax payments and business licensing. The portal is designed to enable interoperability across all public institutions, eliminating the bureaucratic fragmentation that has long frustrated citizens and investors alike.
The vision closely mirrors the models championed by Rwanda and Kenya, which Mozambique has openly cited as digital governance benchmarks. Rwanda has placed nearly all its public services on digital platforms, enabling cashless transactions and minimizing in-person interactions. Kenya similarly consolidated payments through M-Pesa and other channels, covering services from passport renewals to land registration.
Governing the Algorithm: A Consultative AI Body
Alongside ATDI, the Council of Ministers approved the establishment of the National Commission for Artificial Intelligence — a body that Impissa described as “a consultative and technical advisory body to the government on scientific matters, technological development, innovation, and information security in relation to artificial intelligence.”
The commission formalises ambitions the government first floated publicly late last year, when Communications Minister Salim Valá signalled the administration’s intention at the country’s annual MOZTECH technology fair. “We believe that the regulation of Artificial Intelligence in Mozambique should not inhibit the advancement of innovation in this area,” the minister said at the time, previewing a structure that would be “a multisectoral and multidisciplinary platform.”
Separately, a Multisectoral Technical Commission for Coordination and Implementation of Digital Transformation was also approved — a coordinating body designed to align public administration institutions around a unified digital roadmap.
The establishment of these institutions places Mozambique within a growing wave of African governments moving from AI policy discussion to institutional action. According to regional observers, a burst of activity across the continent in early 2026 has seen Morocco, Ghana, Egypt, Rwanda, Kenya and Zimbabwe all announcing specific AI governance or digital infrastructure projects — a shift from the more exploratory policy initiatives that dominated 2025.
International Partnerships Underpin the Vision
Mozambique is not navigating this transition alone. The United Nations Development Programme has been deeply involved in shaping the country’s approach, leading working sessions that produced seven proposed priority areas for digital development under Italy’s Digital Flagship for Africa initiative.
UNESCO is also engaged, providing technical support for the development of a National Artificial Intelligence Strategy — a separate process from the commission just established, led by the National Institute of Information and Communication Technologies. That strategy, presented at a conference in Maputo in December 2025, is being developed by a multisectoral committee bringing together government, academia, and the private sector, with UNESCO’s input intended to align it with international principles on ethics, human rights, and responsible technology.
Underpinning much of the infrastructure agenda is a $150 million World Bank-funded Digital Governance and Economy project, a five-year initiative designed to expand access to civil registration and identification, enable access to public services, and support the broader digital economy. Mozambique has also recently sought contractors to upgrade its civil registration and identity systems — a foundational layer for any functioning digital state.
Ambition Meets Reality: The Scale of the Challenge
The institutional architecture announced this week is bold — but so are the obstacles. Mozambique’s score on the UN E-Government Development Index stands at 0.2848 out of a possible 1.0, well below the sub-regional average of 0.3903, Africa’s average of 0.4247, and the global benchmark of 0.6382. The country also sits in the third tier of the International Telecommunication Union’s Global Cybersecurity Index, signalling significant gaps in technology, law, and human capacity.
Expanding connectivity remains a foundational challenge. In December 2024, the government launched its “Internet for All” project, aiming to push internet penetration from its current 25 percent to full national coverage by 2030 — an extraordinary logistical and financial undertaking for a country where urban and rural access remain starkly unequal.
President Daniel Chapo, who has framed the digital push as a governance transformation rather than merely a technological one, has acknowledged the scale of what lies ahead. Speaking at the country’s first national digital transformation conference in Maputo, Chapo argued: “Countries are not transformed only through physical infrastructure. They are also transformed through digital infrastructure that connects citizens to the state and to opportunity.”
A Nation Betting on the Digital Dividend
Whether the creation of ATDI, the AI Commission, and the Multisectoral Technical Commission translates into tangible change for ordinary Mozambicans will depend on the pace of implementation, the depth of institutional coordination, and the country’s ability to mobilise both financing and technical capacity over the years ahead.
What is clear is that Mozambique has moved from aspiration to architecture. The agencies are now on paper. Whether they take root is the next chapter.
