The countries that most need digital public systems build the fewest.
Payment rails, registries and identity systems are bought from foreign vendors, often hosted abroad, and usually designed for a smartphone and broadband.
- 0.6%
- Africa’s share of the world’s data centre capacity, with about 18% of the world’s people.Source: Africa Data Centres Association 2026 report, via ITWeb; GSMA
- 21%
- of rural Africans use the internet. A public system that needs a smartphone misses most of them.Source: ITU Facts and Figures 2025, via The Guardian Nigeria
- 118
- countries, mostly developing, take part in none of the major AI governance initiatives.Source: UNCTAD Technology and Innovation Report 2025
Payment Confirmation
An organisation can already pay thousands of people by phone in one batch. What it cannot easily say is how many of those people were actually reached.
Pay as usual
The organisation pays through its own provider and uploads the payment file.
Ask everyone
Each recipient gets a text message and a free menu on any phone, in their own language.
Follow up silence
People who do not answer get a reminder, then a call. No answer is a reason to check.
Report people
The report counts people confirmed, silent, disputed and failed. Every figure carries its denominator.
- Who it is for
- NGOs, donors and public agencies that run cash transfers. Companies that pay farmers, casual workers or agents by phone are a second market we are testing.
- It handles no money
- It sends no payments and holds no funds. It works beside mobile money, a bank transfer or a payment card, and needs no change of provider.
- Where it stands
- Design stage. Five of its ten components are built and tested. No organisation has used it yet, and we are looking for the first.
- The pilot
- Ghana. Three payment cycles with one partner, starting with 1,000 recipients. Targets are agreed beforehand and results are published whether or not they are met.
- What follows
- When a customer asks to pay through the same system, we add a payment connector. That larger product is called Disbursement Rails.
One core, built once, then extended.
The systems we want to build look different but share four parts. A team that builds them once can deliver many systems on top.
Horizon 1
Months 0 to 6
- Payment Confirmation
- Language layer, first version
- Digital security service
- First fellows and incubated teams
Horizon 2
Months 6 to 18
- Disbursement Rails: payments
- Implementation for banks and microfinance
- Closed blockchain networks
- Last mile for central bank digital currency
- Land registry and land-backed finance
- African language models
Horizon 3
From month 18
- Sovereign operating system
- Design for a stable digital currency
- Identity and border components
- Partners in Asia and Latin America
The shared core
- Verification
- Ledger
- USSD, SMS and voice
- Local-language layer
Each horizon starts only when the one before it has paying clients. Horizon 3 depends on decisions by states. We build the components and run pilots with willing governments, so the technology is ready when the politics are.
Four rules for every system.
- Sovereign by design
- The client owns the code it pays for, its data and its keys. Components are open source wherever security allows. No client is locked in.
- Lowest device first
- Every function must work on USSD, SMS or voice. Richer screens may show more, but they never collect what a basic phone cannot send.
- One core, many systems
- Verification, ledger, messaging and language modules are shared. Each new product reuses them.
- Built where it is used
- Engineering sits in Africa first, in teams led by people under 30 and mentored by senior architects.
A laboratory that trains its own builders.
Research, training and incubation are planned as a separate non-profit arm, funded by grants. It shares the mission and the talent pipeline, and keeps its own accounts and board.
- Applied research
- Open datasets for African languages, and technical notes on digital money, registries and identity.
- Fellowship
- Six-month paid placements for engineers under 30 inside product teams, each with a senior mentor.
- Open courses
- Short, free tracks in applied AI, security, payments and basic-phone engineering, run with communities that already exist.
- Incubator
- A six-month residency for founders under 30 who build public-interest technology on the shared core.
- First-year plan
- Ten fellows, two course tracks and five incubated teams.
What we will not build.
A company that builds payment, identity and security systems is trusted only if its limits are written down before the first contract.
- No mass surveillance, no spyware, and no tools to monitor journalists, opponents or activists.
- No profiling of voters and no use of voter rolls.
- Security work is defensive only: protecting systems and detecting payment fraud.
- No client data is sold, shared or reused. It is exported to the client and deleted when a contract ends.
- No political party, alliance or government holds shares or a board seat in the company.
- We do not issue money or hold client funds. Payments go through licensed operators.
Presence on the ground in Morocco, Ghana, Ethiopia, the UAE, Sudan, South Sudan and Botswana.
The chief technology officer’s seat is open.
| Name | Role | Based in |
|---|---|---|
| Adil Abdelaati | Founder. Strategy and product | Poland |
| Adil Abdelwahab | Co-founder. Chief Executive Officer of GSAIL P.S.A. and Chief Economist | Poland |
| AbdelRahman Elshiekh | Finance and the United States company | United States |
| Al Amin Adam | Director, Verify Africa | Ghana |
| Mohamed Thani | Company secretary, Verify Africa | Ghana |
| Weam Mohamed | Project Manager | United Arab Emirates |
| Jawad Chafil | Marketing and trade. Partner in GSAIL Morocco | Morocco |
| Edidiong Umana | Junior Technology Officer | Ghana |
| Hussam El Shafie | Junior Technology Officer, East Africa. Owner of Appitize | Sudan and Ethiopia |
| To be appointed | Chief Technology Officer |
Group companies
- Poland
- GSAIL P.S.A., a simple joint-stock company, in registration. European contracts and programmes.
- Ghana
- Verify Africa, Accra, in registration. Engineering, pilots and client work in Africa.
- Morocco
- GSAIL Morocco, planned.
- United States
- A company for investors, planned.
Partner companies
- Sudan
- Appitize, a creative and digital agency working since 2016, owned by Hussam El Shafie. Communication, web and mobile application work.
- South Sudan
- GTX Firm and its team. gtxfirm.com
- Botswana
- Delta TIC Pty Ltd and its team.
We are looking for three kinds of partner.
Pilot with us
You pay at least 1,000 people by phone in Ghana, as an NGO, a donor, a public agency or a company. The pilot costs you telecom fees and nothing else.
Fund us
We are raising pre-seed capital for the product company and grants for the non-profit arm. Our white papers are available on request.
Build with us
We are appointing a chief technology officer and senior engineers in payments and machine learning, and will open fellowships for engineers under 30.
- gsail@nadus.org
- Phone
- +48 888 524 519
Poland. GSAIL P.S.A. and Verify Africa are in registration.