World Bank extends Nigeria digital ID project support by another two years

The World Bank now expects Nigeria to issue the National Identification Number (NIN) to 180 million people, a target that has been revised upwards from an initial 148 million when the project was launched four years ago.

The new digital ID issuance prospect for Nigeria is mentioned in a new restructuring paper which outlines the project restructuring plan, and it comes after the country failed to meet the 148 million issuance projection by June 2024.

Nigeria secured funding to the tune of $430 million from the World Bank in 2020 to implement a national digital ID project with the objective to issue a digital ID to at least 148 million people by June 30 this year.

The project is co-funded by the European Investment Bank and the French Development Agency, and implemented under the auspices of the Identity for Development Initiative (ID4D).

In the wake of the failure to meet key project objectives in the initial project window, the Bretton Woods institution went ahead to revise the project following a request from the Nigerian government.

The extension was approved in two stages over a period of three years, the document mentions, the first of which was to run for a period of six months from June 30, 2024 to December 31, 2024, while the second stage is now expected to cover the period December 31, 2024 to December 31, 2026.

In the project restructuring document, the Bank said the total transfer of resources to Nigeria for the identity project had reached $228 million of the total $430 million, with a percentage payment of 53.16 percent in relative terms. The country is currently working to meet the final disbursement requirement which is amending the legal ID management framework.

Per the report, the initial extension of six months was granted to allow the government of Nigeria “to demonstrate its commitment to project implementation, by designing and launching the procurement of a new national identity management system on an open-source architecture that is modular, interoperable, and scalable.”

The Bank contends that Nigeria indeed met these objectives, reason why “the second stage extension for an additional 24 months is being proposed to allow for completion of critical remaining activities and successful achievement of the project development objective.”

With the restructuring, the Bank says it will allow for “additional time to mitigate against the protracted implementation that resulted from delayed effectiveness and fulfillment of disbursement conditions; critical outstanding activities to be completed including the expansion of the Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) to increase the license for storage capacity for National Identity Numbers (NIN) records from 100 million to 250 million.” Idemia is involved in the database capacity expansion project.

Per the World Bank, the extended project will also lead to the “establishment of a sectoral computer emergency response team (CERT), security operations center (SOC), data center and data recovery center; the development of a new national identity management system which reflects a technology neutral, interoperable and scalable approach that enables authentication; and increasing the project objective indicator target for NIN enrollments from 148 million to 180 million.”

Authorities of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) are upbeat that that the latest move to grant the second stage extension will significantly improve digital ID coverage in the country.

With regard to the implementation of the project since its approval in 2020, the World Bank restructuring paper calls it “moderately satisfactory” as considerable progress has been observed across project activities “in more recent months.”

As of November, the NIMC said more than 115 million people have been issued the NIN.

Article Topics

Africa  |  biometric enrollment  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  National Identity Management Commission (NIMC)  |  National Identity Number (NIN)  |  Nigeria  |  SDG 16.9  |  World Bank