By Tara Nathan

In 2009, the International Institute for Environment and Development reported that as much as $360 million had been wasted on clean water projects in rural Africa. Water wells were built, but regular maintenance and other plans for long-term commercial sustainability were largely overlooked, leaving 50,000 wells in disrepair and jeopardizing the health and livelihoods of millions of people.

Despite genuine good intentions, far too many development-sector projects fail to deliver long-term and sustainable impact. Many problems remain the same since that report came out 17 years ago. And it’s not just infrastructure investments; similar sustainability challenges also plague efforts to drive digital inclusion and financial health.

Financial access has surged; the percentage of people with financial accounts grew worldwide from 51% in 2011 to 79% in 2024, according to the World Bank. However, low-income consumers and micro merchants are still disproportionately locked out of the digital economy, with 1.3 billion adults worldwide unbanked. Financial usage is also a problem. Nearly one in 10 financial account owners in low- and middle-income economies have inactive accounts.

And as with those water projects, it’s very likely a lot of well-intentioned efforts and plenty of funding were wasted in attempting to bring more financial tools to low-income users.

A Call to Action

I hope development, government, and private-sector actors see these points as a call to action. We need to do better for the people we hope to support, and the only way we can do that is by radically changing the development model.

The issues often boil down to disconnected initiatives designed to solve some aspects of a community’s needs without addressing them holistically—and sometimes at cross purposes with other efforts.

A better model might work like a wedding registry, with guests rallying around a new couple’s immediate needs and meeting those needs together in a far more comprehensive and coordinated fashion. In practice, this new model should bring together partners with complementary capabilities and focus on commercial viability to ensure real outcomes.

Managing the mechanics of development is no small feat, but we’re working to create this new model today with both public and private partners from across industries and regions.

MADE for Change

This new model is how the Mobilizing Access to the Digital Economy (MADE) Alliance: Africa operates. Mastercard and the African Development Bank Group cofounded the MADE Alliance in 2024 to provide digital access to critical services for 100 million people and businesses across Africa by 2034. The World Bank joined the cofounders last year as a cochair.

What makes this group different from others? Two important elements. First, the MADE Alliance is built on coordinated, mission-driven, cross-sector project partnerships. No single organization can tackle these challenges on its own; attempts to do so in the past haven’t worked. We’re combining forces with telecommunications and technology companies, local partners, multilateral organizations, banks, and governments so we can deploy our core capabilities in concert.

Second, the MADE Alliance focuses on commercial and profit-making partnerships, not just catalytic donations. As we’ve seen in the past, we can’t solely rely on donations; funding sources can end, sometimes very suddenly. Instead, these projects should have a path to becoming commercial so they can become self-sustaining and scale quickly.

Stronger Connections

The MADE Alliance is already showing promising results. In Kenya, many smallholder farmers struggle to maintain their business because they lack a variety of resources—affordable and reliable internet connectivity, broad access to buyers and sellers, and connections to agricultural advisory and financial services.

To address those needs, we organized a pilot in 13 cooperatives in Kenya, including the Ainabkoi Farmers Cooperative Society in Uasin Gishu County.

Microsoft now partners with a local internet service provider, Mawingu, to deliver high-speed internet to cooperatives using Mastercard’s Community Pass (also known as Farm Pass) service, which digitizes agricultural value chains, payments, and workflows to connect agricultural actors, including cooperatives and their farmers, to a digital marketplace of buyers and sellers. The Kenya National Farmers’ Federation and the African Centre for Women, Information and Communications Technology provide digital training. The next step will be to bring in financial institutions to provide banking services and extend credit to these micro agribusinesses.

With this pilot, the MADE Alliance reached 10,000 farmers who can use these new tools to grow their business and reach new customers.

To be clear, there are still many challenges for the MADE Alliance to overcome. We need to build enough momentum and access initial funding so more companies can join the effort and invest in local communities, too.

We need a new operating model for development, and the coordinated approach of the MADE Alliance is a simple and powerful way to drive profitable business outcomes while communities realize multiplied impact and long-lasting change.

Tara Nathan is executive vice president of Growth Segments at Mastercard and founder of Community Pass.

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To learn more about the MADE Alliance or join as a partner, please visit MADE Alliance: Bridging Digital Access in Africa.