The ADAFP Digital Laboratory is the technology arm of the African Democratic Alliance for Freedom and Progress. It helps member parties and organisations to be visible online, use digital tools well and keep control of their data.
The Laboratory works through five programmes. New programmes will be added as they are ready.
Some member organisations have no website, rely on a personal social media profile, or have no one responsible for IT. This programme fills that gap with practical, low-cost help, starting with what costs least and helps most.
AI tools for research, drafting and translation, used by member organisations under the ADAFP AI Ethics Charter.
Three election systems built and maintained by the Laboratory: a toolkit for party agents, EMOD's observer platform and a public incident map. Each has its own operator and its own data, and they are never merged.
Solid for Political Activities: putting members and organisations in control of their political data, using the Solid open standard.
Online security training for members, activists and staff, from protecting accounts and devices to handling sensitive communications.
An open record of elections, results and published opinion polls across Africa. A project of the ADAFP Think Tank: automated collection by the AI Laboratory, with a human Data Editor approving anything the checks cannot confirm. Public pilot planned for December 2026.
In 2026 ADAFP assessed the online presence of its member organisations. Some have strong websites. Others have none, depend on a Facebook profile that search engines cannot see, or pay for a domain that displays nothing. Many have no IT officer. The programme responds in four stages.
Each member checks and corrects its entry in the ADAFP members directory. This costs nothing and opens contact with every organisation.
Every member already has a profile page on adafp.org. For an organisation without a website, a complete, multilingual, mobile-friendly profile page is an immediate online presence.
Organisations with no presence receive a small, fast website with a few good pages, on a neutral domain rather than an ADAFP address.
Members in good standing that still lack a website receive support for a domain, design and hosting, with the domain registered in the organisation's own name.
Alongside the websites, the Laboratory offers practical help to organisations that have no one responsible for technology.
The Laboratory builds and maintains three election systems. They serve different purposes and different owners, so they are kept strictly apart, with separate operators, separate data and separate hosting. An independent observer's findings must never be open to dismissal as one party's testimony.
Operator and dataOperated by each member party on its own domain. The party owns its data.
PurposeHelps a party's polling agents report station openings, incidents and posted results, including over USSD and SMS on basic phones.
Operator and dataOperated by EMOD. EMOD owns its data.
PurposeSupports accredited, non-partisan observation with standard checklists, reproducible station sampling and parallel vote tabulation.
Operator and dataOperated by EMOD, with moderation.
PurposeLets citizens report election incidents. Reports are moderated and kept separate from accredited observers' findings.
All three systems are in testing and have not yet been used in a real election.
EMOD, ADAFP's election observation institution, is a separate institution. The Laboratory builds the technology used by EMOD's Technology division; observation itself is EMOD's alone.
Member organisations can ask for help with their online presence or IT needs. Experts and partners who want to contribute are also welcome.