- IOTA said it powers the technology behind TWIN and highlighted an open and neutral governance model for cross border trade.
- Stakeholders from TradeMark Africa, the World Economic Forum and the Tony Blair Institute described TWIN as an enabler of AfCFTA objectives.
The TWIN Foundation said stakeholders from TradeMark Africa, the World Economic Forum and the Tony Blair Institute view the initiative as a driver of African trade and an enabler of the AfCFTA vision to connect jurisdictions and reduce border friction. IOTA stated it powers the technology underpinning TWIN and emphasised open, neutral governance for efficient trade.
Six organisations establish TWIN Foundation and set governance to steward open digital infrastructure
The foundation was launched to steward TWIN as an open digital public infrastructure that supports standards based data exchange across borders.
According to project materials, the six founding organisations are TradeMark Africa, the IOTA Foundation, the World Economic Forum, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, the Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation and the Chartered Institute of Export and International Trade.
The group’s stated role includes overseeing technical development, standard setting and ecosystem growth to keep the infrastructure open and sustainable.
How can TWIN benefit trade in Africa? 🌍
Board members from @TradeMarkAfrica, @wef & @InstituteGC see the #TWINFoundation as a driver of African trade & an enabler of the AfCFTA vision – connecting jurisdictions, reducing border friction & building trusted digital… pic.twitter.com/jWdXIDR4Gj
— TWIN Foundation (@TWINGlobalOrg) August 27, 2025
The initiative was introduced publicly alongside AfCFTA convenings and is framed as complementary to efforts to reduce documentary and procedural barriers to the movement of goods and services across the continent.
Its design centres on neutral governance and non proprietary interfaces so that public agencies and private operators can adopt common rails without switching core systems.
East African pilots inform AfCFTA aligned rollout using IOTA’s distributed ledger
TWIN builds on earlier pilots in East Africa that connected customs, port and logistics actors to share verifiable trade data in near real time.
Those pilots, developed by TradeMark Africa and the IOTA Foundation, demonstrated how distributed identifiers and tamper evident audit trails can help reconcile declarations, cut manual checks and lower processing times at borders.
Lessons from these deployments are now being translated into broader AfCFTA aligned implementations under the foundation’s governance. IOTA says its technology provides the underlying ledger and identity tooling used to anchor data integrity while keeping transactional content off chain for confidentiality and performance.
🔁 We're proud to power the tech behind @TWINGlobalOrg. With its open, neutral governance, TWIN reflects IOTA’s core values— enabling fair and efficient global trade for Africa.
A bold step towards borderless commerce for Africa & beyond. https://t.co/teIwUdFWi1— IOTA (@iota) August 27, 2025
The approach aims to allow regulators to verify provenance and compliance while exporters and logistics providers retain control over datasets that move through existing platforms.
The architecture is positioned to support capabilities such as digital product passports and standards compliant dataspace connectors for interoperability between jurisdictions.
The foundation’s backers highlight the potential for lower costs and improved certainty in documentary compliance as trade volumes scale within AfCFTA.
They also point to the importance of neutral governance to attract both public and private adopters and to align with international data sharing initiatives. Further announcements are expected as pilots transition to production within customs and port community systems across participating African states.
At the time of press, IOTA is trading at $0.194472 USD, reflecting a $0.00148 USD increase from the prior close, equivalent to a +0.77% gain over the past 24 hours — a notably precise and modest uptick.
