Manifesto
TheAfriForge is the African foundation for free software and digital sovereignty. This manifesto sets out our vision, our principles, and our collective commitment.
Africa is not behind in talent. It is behind in control.
Every day, African teams build critical services for our governments, banks, hospitals, universities, and businesses. Yet much of this software heritage is still hosted, tooled, and governed outside our jurisdictions. This dependency is not neutral: it exposes our ecosystems to risks of censorship, access disruption, value extraction, and operational fragility.
A continent that does not control its digital infrastructure controls neither its economic future, nor its security, nor its capacity for innovation. TheAfriForge exists to change that.
Our conviction
Digital sovereignty is not a slogan. It is a concrete capability we build brick by brick.
Host our code and data on reliable, close, and audited infrastructure
Govern our collaboration tools according to our values and needs
Produce open source commons that remain in the service of the public interest
Ensure service continuity, even in the event of geopolitical or technical shocks
What TheAfriForge builds
A non-profit foundation structured around three strategic pillars.
Federated and resilient infrastructure
We interconnect local capacities — data centers, universities, technical partners — to offer robust, performant, and distributed services, without depending on a single actor outside the continent.
Open digital commons
We host and structure strategic open source projects that can be adopted by institutions, businesses, and communities, under free licences and transparent governance.
Neutral and transparent governance
We operate with clear, public, and auditable rules, so that technical and institutional decisions serve the long term, not particular interests.
Our non-negotiable principles
Sovereignty first
Critical assets remain under African control, in compliance with our legal frameworks.
Openness and interoperability
No proprietary lock-in. Open standards and portability are baseline requirements.
Security by design
Encryption in transit and at rest, rigorous access management, defense in depth, and auditability.
Local performance
Reduce latency, international transit costs, and single points of failure.
Institutional neutrality
The foundation must not be captured by any single actor, public or private.
Social responsibility
Build useful, lean, and sustainable infrastructure adapted to the realities of the continent.
Skills transmission
Train, document, and equip the next generations of engineers and maintainers.
Our measurable commitments
TheAfriForge commits to publishing verifiable public indicators.
- Availability and resilience of critical services
- Recovery time objectives in the event of an incident
- Number of projects hosted and actively maintained
- Adoption level by African institutions and businesses
- Training programmes and community contributions
Sovereignty is rarely proclaimed; it is measured constantly.
Our ecosystem vision
TheAfriForge is not a single platform. It is a trust framework capable of hosting an evolving portfolio of strategic projects, with a shared objective.
→ Increase the continent's collective autonomy in the global digital economy.
Collaborative software forge
GitForge.africa — Git repositories, issue tracking, CI/CD hosted on the continent
Regional registries and mirrors
AfriRegistry — local distribution of NPM, Python, Docker packages
Software supply chain security
AIForge — security tools, compliance and sovereign code analysis
Compliance and observability
Governance, audit, and monitoring services for institutions
Governance and method
- A public, collectively revisable charter
- Multi-stakeholder governance: academia, industry, public bodies, technical community
- Decisions that are traced, documented, and accountable
- Regular technical and organisational audits
- A published roadmap reviewed periodically
« Trust is not decreed. It is built through proof. »
A call for coalition
We call on universities, research centers, businesses, data centers, operators, governments, impact investors, and African open source communities to join TheAfriForge.
Our ambition is not to copy existing platforms. Our ambition is to build an African strategic capability — open, reliable, and durable.
Join TheAfriForgeThis manifesto is a starting point. The work is collective. The time to act is now.