India is funding and building digital public infrastructure projects in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Kenya and Guyana, marking a shift in New Delhi's ambitions from domestic technology deployment to active export of its governance architecture abroad. The initiative places India among a small group of nations attempting to shape how developing economies build the digital systems that underpin identity verification, payments and public service delivery.

The projects mark a departure from earlier decades, when India was more commonly viewed as a beneficiary of foreign technical assistance rather than a provider of it. Officials in New Delhi have increasingly framed the country's own digital identity and payments systems, built and scaled domestically over the past ten years, as a template that other governments can adopt with Indian support.

The scale of this outreach extends well beyond the four countries currently hosting active projects. New Delhi has signed memorandums of understanding with 24 nations covering cooperation on digital public infrastructure, according to government figures. These agreements typically set out frameworks for technical assistance, training and, in some cases, direct funding for implementation.

The breadth of the agreements suggests a deliberate strategy to build a network of partner states running Indian-designed or Indian-inspired digital systems. Analysts have noted that this positions India as an alternative to Western donor models and to Chinese-backed infrastructure programmes, offering countries a third option for digitising government services and financial transactions.

Much of the practical work behind these agreements has taken place through delegations of foreign officials visiting India to study its systems directly. Recent months have seen technical teams from Sri Lanka, Kenya, Rwanda, Nepal, Indonesia and South Africa travel to India for briefings with the agencies responsible for building the country's digital infrastructure.

These visits go beyond ceremonial diplomacy. Delegations have spent time with engineers and administrators to understand the operational detail of running identity and payment systems at national scale, including how India handled the technical and logistical challenges of enrolling more than a billion residents in its biometric identity programme. Officials involved in the exchanges have described the sessions as closer to a working study tour than a formal state visit, with technical staff walking counterparts through system architecture and implementation timelines.

Three Indian institutions sit at the centre of this outreach. The Unique Identification Authority of India, which built and manages the Aadhaar biometric identity system, has taken a lead role in advising partner countries on establishing their own digital identity frameworks. The National e-Governance Division has worked with foreign governments on digitising public service delivery, drawing on India's experience moving services such as tax filing and welfare distribution online. The National Payments Corporation of India, architect of the Unified Payments Interface that now processes billions of transactions a month domestically, has been central to discussions on building real-time digital payment systems abroad.

Officials involved in the programme argue that the export of these systems could have effects beyond the partner countries themselves. Digital identity systems built on Indian frameworks may ease cross-border verification, while shared payment architecture could simplify transactions between India and its partner states. Whether these ambitions translate into durable infrastructure will depend on the partner nations' capacity to maintain and adapt the systems once Indian technical teams complete their initial involvement.

For India, the scale of the current outreach, spanning Asia, Africa and South America, represents a significant test of whether a domestically built technology model can be transplanted successfully into very different administrative and economic contexts.

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