Rwanda hosts conference on digitalising African identity cards

Delegates from 36 African and 29 non-African nations convene in Kigali, today, to exchange ideas and experiences related to digital identity as well as setting the working agenda and priorities for the year to come for development of identification systems in Africa. The three-day meeting is the Second Annual Government Meeting of the ID4Africa Movement and is hosted by the National Identification Agency (NIDA) of Rwanda. The more than 650 expected participants include delegates from government identification issuing authorities, technology producers and development agencies, as well as UN agencies, among others. ID4Africa is a multi-stakeholder movement that promotes the transparent and responsible adoption of digital identity in the service of development in Africa. The event looks at what practicalities are required for authorities to successfully launch identity programmes, an agenda that was set in the inaugural meeting of the movement in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, in June last year. Briefing journalists in Kigali, yesterday, Joseph Atick, the chairperson of ID4Africa, said the conference aims at making the identification process easy for the governments. “Our idea is basically to make it easier for governments and authorities to empower the people with legal identity. We shall look at how countries can do it faster and easier. Our goal is making sure that we lower the cost for creating identity for the African countries by sharing knowledge across the countries,” Attick said, adding that the conference will look at raising the standards of IDs mainly to enhance their interoperability across the countries. Rwandan travellers use national IDs at Gatuna Border Post with Uganda. (Timothy Kisambira) The topics of discussion include the linkage of civil registration and national ID, the application of identity systems in support of democracy and elections as well as social protection, and will cover important governance and legal framework matters, including privacy and data protection. Participants will also be updated on several national identity authorities that have already begun implementation of such systems, as well as policy briefs from development agencies, including the World Bank, African Development Bank, the African Union, the French Development Agency, and ECOWAS. These presentations introduce the national authorities to a range of financial and technical assistance programmes available from these agencies, and that can accompany the authorities in support of their mission of developing ID systems. The event includes a site visit at NIDA that gives the African government delegates hands-on demonstrations of the best practices adopted in Rwanda. Pascal Nyamulinda, the director-general of NIDA, said he is confident that both Rwanda and the other participating countries will have a lot to learn from each other as they devise ways of overcoming challenges facing identification especially the low levels of investment by the governments and other authorities in Africa. editorial@newtimes.co.rw

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Rwanda hosts conference on digitalising African identity cards