Behind the speedy MyMzansi screens and the Presidency’s race to build a digital government

Ten weeks. That was how long it took the Presidency’s Digital Services Unit (DSU) to build MyMzansi, a prototype that could connect citizens to the government through a single digital entry point.

“You need to be able to prove who you are, to publish information for citizens to consume, to receive information from people, to collect payments, and to issue proof of identity,” Pete Herlihy, the global lead for digital public infrastructure at Amazon Web Services, and one of the project’s key technical partners, said. 

Commenting about the similar prototype they devised for New Zealand’s government, he explained the dual rationale. “We [wanted] to surface that in an app because people like a single front door. But more importantly, because politicians love apps.” 

That’s also the crux of MyMzansi, a sleek, user-friendly interface hiding a vast, reusable digital system meant to reorganise how the South African state operates.

It’s built from modular blocks known as Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). Each block – identity, payments, messaging, credentials – can be swapped, reused, and improved without rebuilding the system from scratch. 

Building a new front door 

Richard Gevers, head of service design and delivery in the DSU at the Presidency, laughs when he recalls the intense development process. 

“Pete, I’ve already lost all my hair,” the bald Gevers told Herlihy during one of their calls, “but my beard is going grey because we need something people can actually hold in their hands next year.” 

Gevers, who founded the civic tech outfit Open Cities Lab before joining government, is the kind of insider who can still sound like an outsider. His small DSU team operates as a startup inside the Presidency, charged with dragging a lumbering state into the digital age.

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Their global partner, Silverstripe, had proven that such infrastructure could be built fast and cheap in New Zealand. Herlihy’s “shower epiphany” led to a working DPI prototype built there (in New Zealand) by three people in six weeks. This proved to be a profound realisation: digital government need not cost billions or take ages to complete.

The process of exporting that idea to SA required just 10 weeks for the localisation, design and demonstration of MyMzansi. Compare that to countries like India or the UK, where similar digital ventures have taken decades to get off the ground. 

The South African prototype features a functional digital ID, driver’s licence, a payments gateway, and a verifiable digital wallet among its capabilities. 

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The code behind the curtain 

The secret to that speed lies in open source digital public goods, which are proven, government-grade software shared globally. MyMzansi uses Silverstripe to handle content and forms, the UK’s GOV.UK Pay for payments, and GOV.UK Notify for messages. Verifiable credentials come from NG by Credisure.

“It’s a plug-and-play system,” said Herlihy. “If you already have a module, great, use that. If you prefer another, switch it in.”

The goal was to adopt a model where systems are interoperable and based on open standards, which helps prevent vendor lock-in and promotes a cohesive digital ecosystem. SA’s digital transformation strategy lists interoperability and scalability as key service principles. 

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Herlihy and a colleague from Silverstripe converted a working prototype into Japanese in just three days to prepare for a meeting with officials from that country, successfully implementing the language and currency adaptation, including handling the yen’s unique lack of decimal places. Herlihy noted that continuous process improvements are steadily shrinking these implementation timeframes.

Making bureaucracy agile 

“Being agile inside the government is… very challenging,” Gevers admitted. That might be the understatement of the year. 

Situated at the intersection of policy, politics and engineering, the DSU navigates complex oversight and compliance. Remarkably, the MyMzansi project gained true momentum within these constraints. 

Gevers was clear that the point isn’t to replace public servants but to augment their work. “This is about making radically better services for people,” he said. “Instead of queues outside the DHA (Department of Home Affairs) offices and Sassa offices, people are able to be serviced with us and that allows more time for complex cases, for extension of services.” 

That cultural shift might prove more radical than the technology itself. The project has already started exposing policy assumptions, like the idea that only citizens, not residents or asylum seekers, should access services. MyMzansi, as Gevers put it, is for “people in South Africa,” not just South Africans. 

Tech that works when the internet doesn’t

At a live demonstration of the app, lead by Gevers and Herlihy at the Global DPI Summit in Cape Town, MyMzansi showed off its digital wallet: apply for a driver’s licence, pay through a unified gateway, and receive a verifiable credential straight into your phone. 

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But the clever bit is what happens when there is no signal. “There is also Bluetooth capability,” Gevers explained. “If you don’t have Wi-Fi, it’s still possible to do the credential and validation using Bluetooth. There is a backup mechanism, which is one of the cool features.”

In rural SA, where connectivity is uneven, that “cool feature” could make or break the user experience. It’s a small engineering decision with large social implications.

A non-mandate mantra 

MyMzansi’s first public rollout is planned for the first half of 2026. Along with digital IDs and drivers licences, social protection services like Sassa grants are at the top of the list for rollout. 

By digitising grant applications and payments, MyMzansi aims to cut fraud, save billions in admin costs, and link recipients to the government directly and more seamlessly. 

Herlihy noted that when the same type of platforms were launched in the UK, they intentionally “did not make it a mandated thing”. Instead of forcing departments to adopt the system, he said, “we just need to make it so good you prefer to use it”. 

This philosophy led to widespread adoption in the UK, even among large agencies. It eventually reached a point where departments were “somewhat negligent to not be using the software” Herlihy said, effectively turning an optional system into the national default through superior usability and cost-effectiveness.

Africanisation of public goods   

Behind the MyMzansi app lies a sprawling roadmap that stretches to 2030, guided by the Presidency’s Inter-Ministerial Committee on Digital Transformation (IMC). 

More than 200 public servants are already involved across this digital transformation strategy, according to Gevers. The long-term aim is an African-led approach to digital public infrastructure that other countries can borrow, remix and localise. 

“What we would really love to see in Africanising DPGs (digital public goods) is this ability for communities to develop,” Gevers said. “To connect communities across the continent that are working on similar issues so that we can share with each other and with global partners, but African-led. It also means we can start to do things like financial inclusion across borders and eventually, hopefully, serve migrant workers and travellers.”

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Gevers spoke about the importance of changing the culture, noting that DPI is just “one part of a culture change which involves governance, which involves standards, which involves training, and understanding how the public sector works”. 

Citing Henry Ford, who once famously said, “If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse”, Gevers explained the MyMzansi strategy. “Let’s not spend four years designing a car and then ask people if they like it. Let’s build something and get it into their hands.” 

With a 2030 roadmap, the DSU seems to have closed the order book on faster horses, slamming the door shut on decades of slow pilots, showing that the best kind of policy is the one you can finally put your hands on. DM