Efforts to establish or improve national identification systems in Africa have coincided with the increasing deployment of mobile technology. This has led to the prioritisation of digital “solutions” for facilitating forms of identification and registration – often via biometric attributes. With an estimated 500 million people in Africa living without any form of legal identification (birth certificate or national ID) (World Bank, n.d.), digital identities have become increasingly popular because of their relative ease, low cost, and convenience compared to more analogue systems. For example, the African Union Commission (AUC) is currently developing a digital ID policy framework for the continent. This effort draws its mandate from the Digital Transformation Strategy (DTS) for Africa (2020-2030), which highlights both the social and economic potential of digital IDs for Africans. These implications are, if anything, underlined by COVID-19  …

With this background in mind, Research ICT Africa (RIA) and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) partnered in 2020 and 2021 to investigate, map, and report on the state of digital identity ecosystems in 10 African countries. The project looked at local, digitised (in full or partially) foundational ID systems in Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. The project set out to contribute to the broader question of whether digital identity ecosystems increase choices and opportunities for Africans, or whether they exacerbate the multidimensional aspects of digital inequality on the continent. …

Quelle / Link: Towards the Evaluation of Socio-Digital ID Ecosystems in Africa (online abrufbar)