From Ghana to Georgia, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has integrated blockchain technology into numerous public systems, including digital identity. The UNDP has published a primer on projects that have successfully integrated tamper-resistant digital ledgers to support development worldwide, titled “New Tech, New Partners: Transforming development in the digital era,” produced in collaboration with its AltFinLab, which advocates alternative finance solutions. The primer argues that blockchain, when designed responsibly, can complement wider digital public infrastructure and digital transformation efforts by strengthening how data, value, and accountability move through systems. In practical terms, this means rules, payments, and records can be coordinated across public institutions, communities, and partners in ways that are verifiable, auditable, and harder to manipulate.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, UNDP is supporting a program to issue verifiable digital university diplomas with the University of Sarajevo Tele-Informatics Centre (UTIC) and EdTech company Sala, exporting diploma data from the university’s student records into the Sala platform, which generates digital credentials for graduates stored within a digital wallet compatible with eIDAS standards. These credentials can be shared through a QR code or a secure link to an employer or institution which can verify them against its on-chain record. In Malawi, UNDP has developed Genius Tags for registering and verifying households in need of humanitarian aid, turning records into secure digital codes processed by a deduplication engine, with verified households receiving a QR code to collect cash, food, and other assistance. Each transaction is logged in real time in a shared digital record, giving partners a view of who has received support and where.
In Kazakhstan, the development agency is collaborating on a project that enables anonymous access to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV, using digital tokens created by MystenLabs and the Sui Foundation to allow people to request medicine without revealing their identity. Other examples include projects in Georgia, Ghana, Mauritius, and Seychelles, illustrating blockchain’s reach into digital payments, climate finance, and community-led investment models. A separate UN white paper details how a blockchain-based Digital Certificate of Entitlement modernized pension verification for more than 70,000 United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund (UNJSPF) beneficiaries, with biometrics, AI, and geo-location technologies supporting the system.
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