Ethiopia Digital ID for Inclusion and Services Project restructured

The Ethiopia Digital ID for Inclusion and Services Project will witness some changes which include defining some terms for payment to biometric enrollment partners involved in the project. These partners include government agencies and state-owned enterprises.

The changes are outlined in a disclosable restructuring paper published August 23.

The project, which has different subcomponents, became effective in May this year, and has as main objective to establish an inclusive digital ID ecosystem and improve service delivery for registered persons in Ethiopia.

The restructuring paper indicates that part of the rationale of the change is to “update the definition of the operating costs in the Financing Agreement (FA) to enable the project to pay incremental operation costs of the registration partners in connection with the provisions of the Fayda registration and credential distribution services.”

As part of the project, implementers estimate that registration partners will enroll at least 20 million persons “at a pre-agreed rate which varies between $1.5-$2.0 for each successfully verified registration, with an overall estimated cost of about $30-40 million over the course of the next few years.”

The paper mentions that although details about the “operating cost” are reflected in project documents and were part of the initial project design, it was important to clearly define it in the negotiated financing agreement. This, it notes, is what will guide the process of reimbursing the expenditure incurred by registration partners which the project says “are expected to cover a large proportion of the population and help with meeting Project Development Objective targets (on number of people issued with a digital ID).”

To effect the proposed change to the FA, the paper indicates that “a technical amendment” will be made to modify the definition of operating cost by adding the phrase “reimbursement of registration partners’ incremental costs incurred on account of registration, issuance and distribution of physical and digital ID cards to Ethiopian residents.”

These change, the World Bank, says does not in any way “affect the project’s scope, design, implementation arrangements nor the risks assessments” and will also not affect financial or procurement arrangements.

The Ethiopia Digital ID for Inclusion and Services Project implementation began in May, and the funders say it has had a good start so far.

The project, whose closing date is January 2029, is being implemented with a $350 million funding from the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA), from which $10 million dollars has already been disbursed.

Part of the project requires the Ethiopian government to carry out inclusive mass citizen registration for national ID cards, as a way of facilitating access to a wide range of public and even private sector services.

It is expected that by the end of the project, at least 90 million Ethiopians as well as legal residents should have the Fayda digital ID.

Currently, the ID program has recorded 8.2 million registrations, with over 2.4 million authentications already completed.

The Ethiopia ID authority (NIDP) hopes to have 70 million IDs issued by the end of 2025.

Article Topics

biometric enrollment  |  biometrics  |  digital ID  |  Ethiopia  |  Ethiopia Digital ID for Inclusion and Services Project  |  Ethiopia National ID Program (NIDP)  |  Fayda  |  national ID  |  World Bank