Yoti pitches offline digital ID to support informal cross-border trade in Lesotho

Informal cross-border trade is crucial to the lives of many people in Lesotho, but 10 percent of the country’s population are not yet included in its national identity system, creating an opportunity for digital ID to preserve the practice, Yoti writes in its latest blog post.

Ferreneik Betton writes for the second in a six-part series on hypothetical uses of digital identity for humanitarian benefit that nearly a third of Lesotho’s Gross National Product comes from informal cross-border trade through only three border posts.

Bottlenecks and delays are a daily reality, and passport-related issues make traders vulnerable to extortion, according to the post.

An easy solution, Betton writes, would be to register traders for a specific database or databases held at all three posts, possibly including each person’s name, address and National Identity Register number along with fingerprint, hand or face biometrics. As long as traders are registered at the border post they use, the system could function off-line. A bilateral agreement with South Africa, which borders Lesotho on all sides, would complete the system.

EU DCC added to Yoti app

Yoti has also added support for the EU’s Digital COVID Certificate (DCC) to its digital identity app, according to company blog post.

Yoti app users can add their vaccination certificate through the ‘Personal details’ page, after which it can be opened on the ‘My Yoti’ page to produce the QR code.

Article Topics

Africa  |  biometrics  |  border security  |  digital identity  |  humanitarian  |  identity verification  |  Lesotho  |  national ID  |  Yoti