Building a sovereign digital landscape to reshape Africa's possibilities

We design and build digital solutions and ecosystems to tackle some of Africa’s most pressing challenges.

SM Digital is purpose-driven founded and grounded in Africa.

We know technology alone isn’t enough. That’s why we focus on embedding digital solutions within local value chains - ensuring they are grounded, effective, and built to last. We’re committed to Africa’s digital sovereignty and to solutions that reflect local realities, languages, and needs.

At SM Digital, we sit at the intersection of AI and the public sector, positioned to help governments and institutions harness the potential of AI-augmented work. Our goal is to simplify and demystify AI, walking the journey with our partners to meaningfully apply it in context, unlock new possibilities, and drive impact.

The African Strategic Hub

Bringing together African stakeholders to work from the same set of data.

We view data as critical infrastructure and an asset, and a prerequisite for African AI sovereignty.
  
The African Strategic Hub is a central data and analytics platform designed to serve as Africa’s One Source of Truth. In collaboration with governments, the private sector and civil society, it aims to make critical data accessible, reduce information gaps, and enable coordinated, insight-driven decision-making across the continent.
 
The African Strategic Hub also serves as a data repository for training izi-ai. This will advance African governments’ data and ai sovereignty by refining a public sector LLM that reflects local context and needs.

Living Plans Portal

The next generation of government plans.

The Living Plans Portal moves beyond static plans on PDF to better reflect the dynamic nature of local spaces. It offers structured templates and embedded insights to support the standardisation, coherence, and strategic alignment of government plans.

A sovereign public sector LLM refined using African data

izi-ai draws its name from the isiXhosa and isiZulu word “iziko”, meaning “hearth” or “central fireplace”- a symbol of shared knowledge, community, and collective decision-making.

izi-ai is an African Large Language Model (LLM), purpose-built for the public sector. It is trained on African data - policies, laws, reports, research papers, myriad datasets, and other official documentation - so that it can understand and reflect the continent’s local knowledge, governance contexts, and languages.

Building tools rooted in African realities

izi-ai is the intelligence layer for a wide range of decision support tools. These tools reimagine governance - improving service delivery, enabling citizen-centred automation, and powering more efficient, context-aware public systems.

izi-ai provides the foundational infrastructure for a host of digital tools:

izi-Chat

Making municipal information, processes, performance data, and research papers more accessible and easier to understand.

izi-Mapping

Empowering public sector officials, researchers, and practitioners regardless of their GIS or technical background to perform geospatial analysis and generate maps using natural language prompts.

izi-PolicyAnalyst

Helping governments, researchers, and development partners make sense of an evolving policy landscape.

izi-Legi Tracker

Enabling users to effectively comb through and conduct analysis on legislation applicability and context.

Disaster and Community Resilience Tool

Helping governments and communities respond to emergencies in real time, using accurate, structured data.

Annual Performance Portal

Using data to help national departments track their performance against strategic priorities.