It is unrealistic to expect a single, one-size-fits-all solution to address digital infrastructure needs at the scale of the continent. Countries differ substantially in their needs, objectives, constraints, and priorities. A more sustainable approach is therefore to establish a common technical foundation that can be extended, adapted, and reused across a wide range of contexts through composition.

This is the principle underlying DIGITAfrica.

What is a DIGITAfrica Blueprint?

DIGITAfrica blueprints are modular, open-source reference architectures that any African research institution can adopt, adapt, and deploy — at their own pace and within their own resource constraints.

Blueprints are not products to buy. They are community-owned specifications for building sovereign, sustainable digital infrastructure.

DIGITAfrica uses blueprints to create a common language between engineers, researchers, and practitioners, enabling them to share a clear vision of digital infrastructure and applications.

A blueprint combines a versioned open specification with an open-source reference implementation, defining which services are needed, how they are connected, and how they can be deployed. The main objective is to provide reusable, standardized, and reproducible end-to-end capabilities while ensuring that they respond to researchers’ actual needs.

Blueprints are developed iteratively and validated with engineers, management, practitioners, and researchers.

Two complementary blueprints

The DIGITAfrica blueprint concept is demonstrated through two complementary blueprints, each targeting a distinct research and education domain while sharing the same underlying composable infrastructure.

1. Edge-AI Blueprint

The Edge-AI Blueprint provides an environment for developing, experimenting with, and deploying machine-learning applications at the edge.

It combines notebook-based access with machine-learning lifecycle management and infrastructure observability, enabling users to conduct experiments on resources ranging from lightweight edge nodes to larger clusters.

2. Heterogeneous Networking Blueprint

The Heterogeneous Networking Blueprint provides a controlled environment for experimenting with advanced networking technologies, including programmable radios and 5G networks.

It enables users to access telecom resources and experiment with a fully functional 5G core and RAN.

Together, the two blueprints demonstrate the central objective of DIGITAfrica: providing reusable and accessible infrastructure that can support different scientific domains while adapting to heterogeneous resources, deployment scales, and user needs.

Modularity to meet countries’ objectives

DIGITAfrica blueprints are composable. Rather than defining a monolithic platform for every use case, they are assembled from reusable baseline services.

Individual sites can therefore combine and configure the services required for their specific objectives while relying on a shared technical foundation. An institution can fork, adapt to its environment, and deploy blueprints according to its needs.

All blueprints are built on the same common set of foundational baseline services. These services provide the shared capabilities required to operate a blueprint, independently of the particular application domain or objectives for which it is deployed.

Their value lies in their ability to be combined in different configurations while preserving a common architectural foundation.

The foundational services

• Resource management and orchestration – manages and coordinates the physical and virtual resources required to run blueprint workloads, typically through one or more clusters.
• Identity management – provides unified authentication, authorization, and access control across users, services, and deployment tiers.
• Connectivity – connects users, resources, and services across local, regional, national, and federated environments, enabling reliable communication and data exchange.
• User interface – provides a consistent interaction layer through which users with different levels of technical expertise can access and operate the platform.
• Data services – provide the mechanisms required for data management, including data quality, governance, accessibility, and lifecycle management.

From common services to blueprints

The distinction between a common service and a blueprint is therefore fundamental.

A common service is a single, reusable building block that provides a well-defined capability, while a blueprint is a documented composition of multiple building blocks, together with the configuration, interfaces, dependencies, and orchestration required to make them operate as a coherent system.

This compositional model makes it possible to balance standardization and local adaptation. The common services establish the technical primitives that can be shared across deployments, while blueprints determine how those primitives are assembled to address a particular application domain or operational objective.

This approach provides a common foundation without imposing a single deployment model — an important principle for digital infrastructure designed to serve diverse research and education environments across Africa.

Authors: Damien Saucez (Inria Centre at Université Côte d’Azur) and the DIGITAfrica WP2 team