ID4Africa 2024 AGM adds 4th day to accommodate largest-ever program

The program for this year’s big ID4Africa in-person gathering has been released, unveiling a new kind of technology demonstration and adding a fourth day to pack in even more debate and collaboration around the issuance of legal and digital identity.  Registration is now open.

The digital identity community will gather for the 2024 Annual General Meeting in Cape Town, South Africa for four days in May. The first three days will be made up of a dozen plenary sessions, with the biometrics and digital ID technology exposition running simultaneously, as in past years. Day four will consist of four workshops and four forums, each chaired by an international organization.

New to the ID4Africa’s AGM this year is a “Hands-On AI” demonstration, which is hosted in the exposition hall.

The theme of the event is: “Digital Identity as DPI: Fostering trust, inclusion & adoption.” That theme is subdivided into four pillars, focussing on digital identity as infrastructure, building trust, fostering inclusion and accelerating use cases.

Two-thousand attendees are expected to convene, the most yet, representing all or nearly all African countries, as well as dozens of others around the world. The event continues to grow, despite nearing its functional size limit.

As in past years, Biometric Update will report live on location.

Program and speakers unveiled

The plenaries will begin with a pair of sessions sharing reports from identity authorities in a total of eight African nations. Representatives from four nations will present different digital identity use cases and a series of sessions will focus on digital public infrastructure during the first day’s afternoon.

Technology will take more of the spotlight during the second day, with biometrics and digital ID providers sharing innovations in multiple sessions, and a NIST symposium on “the state of the art in biometrics.” The final plenary of day two will focus on interoperability.

Day three plenaries will cover advanced digital credentials management and guardrails for ID systems, with the latter divided into panels on governance, the role of civil society, and policy reforms.

Representatives of more than a dozen African nations and major international organizations like the World Bank, UNHCR, UNECA and OpenCRVS will participate in day four’s forums and workshops, along with representatives from universities around the world.

Supplementary sessions and networking opportunities for participants are also built into the schedule.

As in past years, many of the highest-profile experts in biometrics and digital identity will be speaking at ID4Africa’s AGM. Among them, this year’s class of speakers includes Teki Akuetteh of Africa Digital Rights’ Hub, Dr. Claire Dennis S. Mapa of the Philippine Statistics Authority, Dr. Kanwaljit Singh of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Patrick Grother, Craig Watson and Mei Lee Ngan of NIST and Pam Dixon of World Privacy Forum, who has just accepted a position as a lecturer for Carnegie Mellon University Rwanda course on digital identity ecosystems.

A notable step for 2024 is the moderator role of ID4Africa Ambassador Engr. Abisoye Coker-Odusote of NIMC and Deputy Ambassador Dr. Lourino Alberto Chemane of Mozambique’s INTIC.

“Platinum Patrons” of this year’s event are Muhlbauer and Veridos, and “Gold Patrons” are Thales and SITA.

The exposition will be made up of more than 100 technology providers and organizations, along with influential groups like the Secure Identity Alliance and MOSIP.

The next episode of ID4Africa’s popular Livecast series is also set to air at the end of this month. The event will spotlight digital identity in healthcare, and feature updates from Senegal, Ethiopia and Cameroon, along with a policy panel and a keynote by Wayne Naidoo, technical director of Jembi Health System.

ID4Africa’s 2024 AGM will be held on May 21 to 24 at the Cape Town International Convention Center 2 (CTICC 2). Registrations are on now, in English and French, and space is limited.

Article Topics

Africa  |  biometrics  |  conferences  |  digital identity  |  ID4Africa  |  ID4Africa 2024  |  UNECA