Over 3M digital IDs distributed in Afghanistan, 900k activated in Jordan

Afghanistan’s National Statistics and Information Authority (NSIA) says 3.12 million national digital ID cards have been districted in the country in the past twelve months.

The government agency said in a Facebook post this week that the figures were achieved following efforts deployed by 76 digital ID card distribution centres in all the 34 administrative provinces of the country.

Per the NSIA statistics, 2 million, 68 thousand cards have been handed to men, while 1 million, 56 thousand have been issued to women. In terms of areas with the greatest number of cards distributed, Kabul tops the chart with 700,000 cards given out. The Herat province follows with about 280,000; Balkh comes next with 188,000, Nangarhar with 162,000, and Kandahar with 155,000.

As the NSIA indicates, more than 12.9 million national digital ID cards have been distributed to citizens since the process began, with 7.5 million of them issued to men and 5.4 million to women. The population of Afghanistan is estimated at close to 41 million people.

The progress announced by the NSIA comes as good news for applicants who had suffered serious card printing delays in 2022.

Jordan activates 900k digital IDs

While the distribution of digital ID cards is said to be making progress in Afghanistan, activation of the credential using a mobile application is also seeing success in Jordan.

Already, about 900,000 citizens have activated their digital IDs on their smart phones using the Sanad app, according to the Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship.

Government authorities have called on citizens to continue to activate the IDs in order to have easy access to a wide range of available public services, Ammonews reports.

The government has integrated iris biometrics technology from IrisGuard into the Sanad app.

In line with its digital transformation and modernization efforts, the Jordanian government hopes to ensure that 3.5 million digital IDs are activated by 2025 when the country expects to have digitized all government services.

A multi-million dollar World Bank support to enable the country attain this goals has been mooted.

Last year, Jordan planned to activate one million digital IDs.

The total population of Jordan is just over 11 million people.

Article Topics

Afghanistan  |  biometrics  |  digital government  |  digital ID  |  identity document  |  Jordan  |  mobile app  |  Sanad