An estimated 542 million Africans lack identity cards and potentially face statelessness. Without a legal identity, they can be excluded from basic human rights like education, healthcare and protection.
Most African countries have tried to rectify this by adopting a digital identity system to provide “legal identity for all, including birth registration” according to the Sustainable Development Goal 16.9 by 2030. Digital identity systems use databases to store biometrics and personal identity information together.
These systems claim to abolish identity fraud and corruption, because the identity is permanently fixed in the database and cannot easily be tampered with. In practice, however, creating and maintaining the system relies on many intermediaries. Chiefs, legal personnel, local authorities, teachers, employers, document brokers, family and friends all participate in enrolling, updating and certifying identities. These intermediaries make the system vulnerable to manipulation. But without them, hardly a legal identity could be established.
