World Bank Identification 4 Development website.
[This is an excerpt from an article in The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs.]
The digitalisation of national identity systems is often treated as a black box, with little attention paid to whether these systems are genuinely beneficial. In contemporary nation-states, national identification is essential for accessing work, travel, financial services, and property. Most African countries are low to middle-income but are experiencing a rapid and massive shift towards digitalising identities- a market worth US$15 billion (UNECA, Citation2023).
According to the World Bank (Citation2021a), Sub-Saharan Africa is home to almost half of the global population without an ID, despite accounting for only one-third of the world’s population.
This exclusion has significant consequences, as it prevents many people from participating fully in their countries’ economic and social life. In many cases, a lack of identity also means being unable to access social welfare. As a result, national digital identity systems have become a central topic in development discourse, both in academia and policy circles.
The deployment of biometric digital identity systems in the Global South poses a complex challenge that involves not only identity issues but also governance and technology issues. As Ajana (Citation2013) argues, biometric identity systems (part of digital identity) have multiple and diverse narratives that go beyond the discourse of technology and identity.
Opening the ‘black box’ of national digital identity in Africa
Arguably, Africa’s engagement with digital technologies, especially identity technologies, is not a result of organic processes. Instead, it reflects logics (or motivations) originating from outside the continent, including the AU’s digital transformation strategy (DTS), which is aligned with its development agenda in Agenda 2063. However, is the digital identity system a form of co-optation by external actors? Co-optation is closely related to power; it occurs when one party has the power to coerce another (Gamson, Citation1968; Lacy, Citation1982). Selznick (Citation1966) defines co-optation as ‘the process of absorbing new elements into the leadership or policy determining structure of an organisation as a means of averting threats to its stability or existence’ (African Union, Citation2022, p. 259). I suggest that the answer is more complex. Africa’s digital ecosystem can be seen as a case of ‘strategic co-optation’ conceptualised by Kruck and Zangl (Citation2019).
Madianou (Citation2019) identifies multiple logics behind biometric-backed identity management in Africa. I do not dispute these logics, but I question whether African states, in developing their digital identity management framework, are simply engaging in co-optation. I also argue that the current efforts do not address the public service and governance inefficiencies that plague many African countries. Therefore, the security logic overshadows the development logic that supposedly underpins the move towards digital identity management systems.
Moreover, implementing national digital identity information systems across Africa is obstructed because many enrolment programmes are linked to initial birth registration. In Kenya, for example, denying birth registration and other primary documents allows for discrimination in including and excluding individuals from the national identity system. The new Kenyan national digital identification regime aims to provide every citizen with an identity number to enable them to engage in civil and social activities, such as accessing healthcare, voting, marriage, financial services, and education. However, minorities such as Nubians, Arabs, and Indians face difficulties enrolling in the scheme due to a lack of access to birth certificates, an essential enrolment requirement (Macdonald, Citation2021; Dahir, Citation2020, Open Society Initiative Citation2020). Despite legal provisions for birth registration under the Constitution of Kenya (Citation2010) and the Birth and Registrations Act, many people struggle to access these services. In 2016, the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights found that Kenya’s vetting procedures often exclude ethnic and religious minorities. Kenya is not alone in facing challenges with birth registration.
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Across Africa, millions of children are effectively rendered stateless due to their inability to register their births. According to (UNICEF, Citation2020a,) approximately 168 million children under age 5 are unregistered, with around 57% (96 million) residing in Africa. East Africa has the highest number of unregistered children, at approximately 38 million (UNICEF, Citation2020b, pp. 11–13). The UN and the African Union (AU) have committed to universal birth registration and improving civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS). Target 16.9 of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals aims to ensure ‘legal identity for all, including birth registration’, while Target 17 focuses on improving CRVS. These targets bring identity issues into the development discourse. African countries have adopted regional and continental instruments to complement their international commitments. Universal birth registration is a commitment under the AU’s Agenda 2063. To this end, by 2015, the AU had adopted its own CRVS program, the Africa Programme on Accelerated Improvement of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (APAI-CRVS). Regional economic blocs have also adopted programmes to ensure identity for all. For instance, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) adopted the Banjul Plan of Action on the Eradication of Statelessness 2017–2024. In 2016, the 40th SADC parliamentary forum committed to ending statelessness in their respective countries (Citation2016). In the Great Lakes region, a similar commitment was made at the ministerial level (International Conference on the Great Lakes Region [ICGLR], Citation2017).
The transition to digital civil registration has shown some initial successes in some places. In Burkina Faso, for example, the iCivil mobile application allows midwives to register births even in rural settings, removing distance as a barrier to birth registration. Similar projects are being piloted in Senegal and Uganda (Zewaldi, Citation2019, p. 8; Government of the Republic of Uganda, Citationn.d.). However, challenges with birth registration across Africa vary from inadequate legal frameworks and privacy concerns to ethnic tensions. Digital tools can only alleviate some of these issues; poor infrastructure and ethnic and religious bias remain significant obstacles.
South Africa, for instance, has one of the highest rates of birth registrations on the continent. It has improved its birth registration from 25% to 95% by 2012 (StatsSA, Citation2013). Yet, swathes of people still cannot be registered because of the complicated legal framework. Mathapo and Hodgson point out that the South African Birth and Registration Act creates additional hurdles to birth registration:
a child’s parents must both hold a valid passport, visa and refugee or asylum seeker permit; a parent’s fingerprints (if alive); an affidavit provided by a South African citizen if the birth occurred outside of a hospital; and the consent of the mother allowing the father of the child to register the birth of the child if the parents of the child are unmarried. (Mathapo & Hodgson, Citation2021)
Despite all the sophisticated international and regional instruments on the ground, much work still needs to be done.
Odilile Ayodele is a Senior Research Specialist in the Developmental, Capable and Ethical State (DCES) Division, Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), Pretoria, South Africa.
