Kenya’s birth registration reforms set the stage for automatic national ID issuance

In the near future, Kenya will introduce a system whereby citizens who attain the age of 18 will automatically be issued national ID cards.

This move, authorities say, is predicated on reforms introduced to streamline birth registration by digitizing the process and linking it up with the national ID system through the Maisha Namba.

Last year, Kenya said the digitization of its civil registration system was far advanced with about 90 percent of birth certificate applications done digitally.

Announcing the plan recently, Kenya’s Interior Cabinet Secretary, Kipchumba Murkomen, said steps are already being taken to ensure the effective start of the initiative soon. He said data for the national ID issuance will be gotten from the civil registry, Citizen Digital reports.

With the new system, every Kenyan registered at birth is issued a Unique Personal Identifier (UPI) which serves as a birth certificate number, and later a national ID identifier when the individual attains the legal age of I8.

Speaking on the recent move by President William Ruto to remove the vetting process which inadvertently prevented thousands of Kenyan border inhabitants from procuring the national ID, Murkomen said with the new dispensation, ID vetting will begin from the level of birth registration.

He rejected suggestions that the removal of the extra vetting process will compromise national security.

“The fact that we removed extra vetting does not mean that we have compromised on security of the country. The process that we are going to apply now of identifying who has gotten an ID or who has not, is to leverage the existing data across the board to know who you are,” Murkomen said as cited by Citizen Digital.

The Interior minister has also pledged to effectively lead the reforms undertaken by the department to accelerate digitization so as to enhance access to administrative services.

To Murkomen, the new approach of issuing IDs automatically will ensure that no foreigners are able to obtain the document as the “government will depend on existing data collected from Kenyans to streamline the issuance of government documents, with technology helping to root out non-locals,” per Kenya News Agency.

Developer claims intellectual property right for Maisha Namba

The government’s course of action regarding automatic national ID issuance is part of several steps being taken to drive adoption for the new Maisha Namba digital ID which has faced several hurdles on the way of its rollout.

As if those challenges are not over, information is emerging that one developer says the Maisha Namba ID is his idea, and is claiming a huge sum of money form the government as compensation.

Nairobi Wire narrates that Moses Victor Orwa Onyango has filed a suit at the Nairobi High Court, alleging that in 2021, he shared the idea with top government officials in including President Ruto who was Vice President at the time.

The software developer, who’s is claiming a whopping sum of 391 billion Kenyan Shilling (US$3.03 billion), says the system from which Maisha Namba was built is dubbed “Kenya Cyberspace_Portal” and is his intellectual property.

Among the government officials and bodies sued are the Attorney General, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), and the Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government.

Article Topics

Africa  |  biometrics  |  birth registration  |  digital ID  |  Kenya  |  Maisha Namba  |  national ID