Direction for open source DPI sustainability, local ownership established

Governments and development organizations reached a convergence on how to achieve sustainability and local ownership of open source identity systems like MOSIP, OpenCRVS and health platform DHS2 in a session on day 4 of the 2026 ID4Africa AGM.

ID30 Founder and CEO Jaume Dubois led the session, which included a pair of panel discussions, and sat down with Biometric Update following its conclusion to discuss the insights shared.

The sessions explored the country journeys of Togo, Ethiopia and Uganda and the perspective of funding bodies like the World Bank and Gates Foundation.

Silete Devo, DG of Togo’s ANID, noted the importance of early capacity building. Starting prior to running the tender for Togo’s system integrator allowed ANID personnel to influence the system’s design to suit the country’s needs with far more understanding of the national situation than a foreign SI could possibly provide.

Rahel Abraham Yitbarek, deputy director and COO of Ethiopia’s NIDP related her agency’s path to sustainable financing. NIDP began providing identity verification services to relying parties for free to incentivize public registration by making it useful, which also helped build the user base that was demonstrating the service’s value to the business community. Once it reached critical mass, organizations had already seen the value and were willing to pay, generating revenue to support Ethiopia’s digital ID system through programs like the VeriFayda KYC service.

Panelist Rosemary Kisembo, ED of Uganda’s NIRA, also recently shared insights on open-source sustainability with Biometric Update for a report on “Understanding MOSIP.”

Next up was the international community: “We wanted them to maybe react to this (situation) and propose (a way) to sustain this local ownership and capacity building more than they do,” says Dubois.

Build capacity early to adapt design

Capacity building needs to start from the first day of funding availability was one of the key insights identified. This enables ownership of the design in the early stages, and of the entire system later on.

The local private sector needs to be more involved, Dubois says, and earlier in the process. Doing so will allow a way for local capacity to be built and applied beyond the normal capacity of public sector bodies to retain their talent – a constant problem in public sector technology projects.

Foreign system integrators are typically brought in to set up the system, and have the qualifications to win tenders as the primary contractor. They are often paid in U.S. dollars, which are provided by the development organization funding the ID initiative.

But operating expenses make up more than a quarter of the ten-year cost of ID systems, and if those expenses are to be paid to foreign contractors, more foreign currency is needed. Local companies can be paid in local currency, again easing the project’s sustainability for governments.

National capacity can also be supplemented with regional capacity, as governments solve problems for themselves that can be adapted with relative ease to those of their neighbors.

Dubois says when asked by Biometric Update about the division of local capacity between the public and private sectors that there are ready examples, such as a passport project in Peru, where local capacity can be matched to government needs.

In that case, local company CNS, specializing in photocopier and IT maintenance with a national network, was recruited to increase its own internal capacity to meet the requirements of the project. Once successful, the company took its newfound capabilities to neighboring countries as a regional service provider.

There are many challenges to sustainability, and all must be addressed, but stakeholders said during the panel discussion that human capacity is the one that enables governments to tackle the other challenges.

They also agreed on a joint commitment, to: “Build, as a priority, local human capacity and local digital ecosystems ensure at national, regional and continental level.”

Further to that end, the World Bank is already working on a “community of practice” for African countries to share the capacity they have gained in this area.

Funding cycles and an emergent race to revenue

ID and DPI projects tend to last for ten to fifteen years, Dubois says. “This is completely decoupled from the funding cycle. The funding cycle is 5 years for a World Bank program.”

This means the cycle of “build, sustain and build on top” that leads to sustainable business models cannot be completed within the window when funding is available.

“They can normally manage the initial build, they can start to scale, maybe they can finish the scale,” he says, but revenue from services, and therefore sustainability, remains out of reach.

Dubois refers to the example set by Ethiopia of an effective business model that supports increased scale and sustainability, but inherently takes time to demonstrate value.

Open source does not mean free, but while database licenses are commonly recognized as a necessary cost, it has not been adequately recognized ahead of time by governments. The international development community can help governments plan better with improved sensitization about the costs of open source that could otherwise seem hidden.

The various cost factors and the steps in between the establishment of a successful digital ID program and a sustainable business model for service delivery mean that governments need a bridge between the capital expense and operating expense phases.

When the World Bank’s funding for Madagascar’s national ID system runs out in 2026, the program may be successful by its own criteria, but not yet generating the revenue in needs to cover its OpEx, Dubois explains.

Another year, maybe two would be enough to develop the services and relationships needed for revenue.

“It stops a bit too early at the moment,” Dubois says in summary.

With a whole set of digital identity programs started between about 2016 and 2020 coming to the end of their funding cycles, the bridge to sustainable OpEx must be built quickly, or it will be too late for many countries.

Article Topics

digital identity  |  ID4Africa  |  ID4Africa 2026  |  MOSIP (Modular Open Source Identity Platform)  |  national ID