Malawi swells civil registry with 74K biometric enrollments in one week

Malawi’s National Registration Bureau (NRB) says it enrolled 74,127 citizens into the national civil registry in a supplementary exercise that ran from December 29, 2024 to January 4, 2025.

In a statement that provides figures on the supplementary civil registration exercise, the ID authority said it targeted all the 13 council areas involved in the first phase of voter registration which was conducted by the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC).

“The NRB conducted the Civil Registration exercise prior to the MEC Supplementary Voter Registration exercise to allow sufficient time for processing Unique Identification Numbers, as well as for adjudicating and de-duplicating the captured records in accordance with Civil Registration procedures,” the statement, signed by NRB Principal Secretary, Mak Sambo, and posted to Facebook, reads.

The authority said as of January 10, a total of 69, 941 national ID cards had already been produced and distributed to their applicants, while 4,398 duplicate records have been flagged and subjected to further investigation.

Of the 74,127 citizens who were registered, the NRB says 37,131 are males and 36,996 are females. The figures also show 51,526 of the registrants are young people who will be 18 or above by the date of the upcoming elections on September 16.

In Malawi, ID cards are issued to citizens from the age of 16, but they have to wait until 18 to attain legal voting age. The NRB and MEC share civil registration data for the purposes of voter registration in line with a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in July 2023 to facilitate voter participation.

The NRB also recalled efforts which it deployed during the two phases of the biometric voter registration exercise conducted by the MEC from October 21 to January 4, noting that “during this period, a total of 373,996 new citizens were registered.”

“NRB would also like to remind the public that the bureau will continue to provide Identity Verification services during the upcoming Supplementary Voter Registration exercise by MEC,” the statement assures, adding that all complaints arising from the first supplementary registration exercise should be submitted through forms already made available at registration centers.

In the heart of the voter registration exercise, the NRB said it had taken measures to accelerate the issuance of ID cards to enable more citizens enroll for the upcoming elections. The move appeared to have paid off when it December, the ID authority said it was distributing three million cards printed in the country.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  civil registration  |  digital ID  |  digital identity  |  identity management  |  legal identity  |  Malawi  |  national ID  |  National Registration Bureau (NRB)