Rwandan ID agency sites visits on third day of ID4Africa

The third day of the ID4Africa Forum was devoted to site tours by foreign government officials of Rwanda’s national identity authority.

The three-day event, held in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, was the second annual government meeting of the ID4Africa Movement. ID4Africa bills itself as a multi-stakeholder movement and organization that promotes the transparent and responsible adoption of digital ID management in the service of development in Africa. The organization’s aim is to share experiences and establish real world best practices that set the correct expectations for what is involved in launching and sustaining successful identity programs.

Site visits are one of the methods that ID4Africa utilizes to share best practices. The government officials visited three offices last Thursday operated by the National Identification Agency of Rwanda. The officials went to multiple offices in Rwanda’s capital region, where they inspected how the application and enrollment processes, including biometric capture, are carried out.

They also visited the agency’s headquarters where Pascal Nyamulinda, the director general, took them on a guided tour of Rwanda National ID card personalization and production centers.

They inspected various facilities, which included the card production chain, and also experienced a practical demonstration of the technologies used for ID production, validation, storing, among other processes.

Nyamulinda said that: “With the commitment of the government, development agencies, IT solution providers and domain experts, Africa will move from the old civil identification systems to implement modern IT schemes and applications. The use of such systems will allow identity to unlock programs of social protection, healthcare and mobile payments.”

As BiometricUpdate.com reported previously, Rwanda announced at the ID4Africa Forum and exposition in Kigali that it will roll-out an integrated eID card in July. The east African country will use an eID card with an embedded 64-kilobyte chip to integrate multiple details, including health insurance and driver license data.

Rwanda also has made significant strides in its identity ecosystem. During the conference, and in a new report published by ID4Africa on Rwanda’s identity management system, it was revealed that the country has put in place a national population register covering over 95 per cent of its population. This means that between 2.3 to 2.5 million households, which equates to the entire population, is registered in Rwanda’s unified social stratification register. The country is also a leader in identity management in Africa, because it has already deployed online identity verification services, and the cost of mandatory national identity cards are the lowest in Africa (under US$1), while the costs of all identity services provided to citizens by government are sustained through cost-effective fees.

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BiometricUpdate.com was the official journalist for the 2016 forum and exposition.

Article Topics

biometric enrollment  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  ID4Africa  |  identity management  |  identity verification  |  national ID