Sierra Leone signs up for national digital ID pilot built with MOSIP

Sierra Leone has struck a deal with MOSIP to build and pilot a national digital ID system with open source technology.

The plan is for the IIITB, which developed MOSIP, to provide technical support to Sierra Leone’s civil registration authority for the design, development and maintenance of a foundational ID system using MOSIP’s open-source modules.

The outcome of the pilot will be considered as a basis for modernizing the national ID system, according to the announcement.

The memorandum of understanding (MoU) specifies that the pilot will build on existing registrations.

“As an institution mandated by law to carry out CRVS and ID Management activities in Sierra Leone covering both citizens and non-citizen residents, the National Civil Registration Authority (NCRA) aims to have a state-of-the-art ICT and Identity Management Infrastructure in place in order to provide seamless civil registration, production and dissemination of vital statistics and identity management services to and on the population of the country,” says NCRA Director General Mohamed Mubashir Massaquoi. “As such, working with the MOSIP Team to pilot the MOSIP DPG based Digital Identity Platform is timely. We look forward to a successful pilot program as it will help us at NCRA – Sierra Leone to understand the modules, features, and functionalities of the Open Source MOSIP ID Platform. Thereafter, the NCRA will then determine modules of interest for consideration and adoption that should complement the already existing partnership the NCRA has with another vendor for some identity services in Sierra Leone.”

MOSIP partnered with OpenG2P, a digital public goods organization co-founded by Sierra Leone’s government, to work on a platform for effective public service delivery through digital ID last year.

“We at MOSIP look forward to witnessing the power of robust technology in Sierra Leone,” says Professor S. Rajagopalan of MOSIP and IIIT Bangalore. “The team here is set to provide support to the nation in this pilot and are confident that the learnings through the process will be invaluable in identifying their needs.”

MOSIP also recently signed an MoU with Burkina Faso, and surpassed 76 million registrations across 9 jurisdictions.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  civil registration  |  CRVS  |  digital ID  |  digital ID infrastructure  |  identity management  |  MOSIP (Modular Open Source Identity Platform)  |  National Civil Registration Authority (NCRA)  |  national ID  |  open source  |  Sierra Leone