MOSIP seeks closer engagement with 16 African countries

Southern African countries could be getting a boost to their national identity systems.

India’s Modular Open-Source Identity Platform (MOSIP) is looking to work with the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) to enhance the bloc’s foundational identification systems.

“We are eager to engage Sadc countries, but we don’t approach this as a marketing exercise” MOSIP chief strategy officer Arun Gurumurthy told a group of visiting African journalists in December. “We are open to working with any government that shares our vision for secure and scalable identity systems,” he said.

MOSIP offers open-source technology to build and implement national identity systems, with the platform having a modular design that allows for easy customization and flexibility. Governments that use MOSIP have full ownership over the digital infrastructure as it is an open platform designed to help avoid vendor lock-in.

Sadc is a regional economic bloc of 16 countries in Southern Africa, of which the three most populous are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, and South Africa. MOSIP’s appeal to Sadc comes at a time when the Zimbabwean government is keen to strengthen its digital infrastructure to further economic development.

In addition, MOSIP has hosted a delegation from South Africa for knowledge exchange and is in discussions with Zambia for similar. Meanwhile in west Africa Nigeria plans to implement the MOSIP platform for its digital identity management system and upgrade its biometric capabilities with an $83 million contract for a system integrator.

MOSIP’s Gurumurthy has cited the European Union’s Digital Identity Wallet as an example of what the platform can do, giving consumers control over their information, and emphasizing one of MOSIP’s key principles of safe transfer of data between government systems that acknowledges user consent.

Article Topics

Africa  |  biometrics  |  digital ID  |  MOSIP (Modular Open Source Identity Platform)  |  national ID  |  Southern African Development Community (Sadc)