Fayda digital ID critical for Ethiopia’s five-year refugee inclusion strategy

Ethiopia’s national digital ID (Fayda) has been described as a critical tool in the implementation of a government framework aimed at providing a sustainable development roadmap for all refugees in the country.

The refugee inclusion framework dubbed Makatet, which means inclusion in the local Amharic language, has been designed to move Ethiopia from its traditional encampment refugee management model that depends much on aid, toward a state-led development approach focused on long-term inclusion and self-reliance for forcibly displaced persons. The strategy was launched last month.

According to a paper published by Washington-based think tank, the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), Fayda is proving vital in supporting the government in this vision as the National ID Program (NIDP) has been multiplying efforts, together with its partners, to ensure that digital ID is issued to refugees to enable them access a wide range of public and private sector services.

Government figures show Ethiopia is currently home to about 1.1 million refugees and asylum seekers from 27 countries, together with more than two million internally displaced persons it has the responsibility to manage.

With the Makatet plan, the issuance of the Fayda is among the key priorities, and is framed as an enabler of other goals that include integrating refugees into the educational system, facilitating access to work permits and business licenses, financial inclusion, and enabling them to form community advocacy organizations.

Ethiopia kicked off Fayda issuance for refugees in March 2024 with the help of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Since then, the drive has been ongoing with the agency hailing the Ethiopian government early this year for facilitating access to services for those displaced persons thanks to the ID project that is largely funded by the World Bank.

Fayda issuance is open and voluntary for all refugees from five years old and above, and their data security and privacy are guaranteed in line with safeguards provided by existing legal frameworks, and also thanks to a tripartite data-sharing agreement between the UNHCR, the Refugees and Returnees Service (RRS), and NIDP which is in line with the World Bank’s emphasis that effective governance and data protection are essential components of digital trust frameworks.

The Fayda digital ID is also considered the bedrock of other national plans in Ethiopia, such as the Digital Ethiopia 2030 strategy, which aims to make the country a sovereign digital state.

The MPI paper signals that while the refugee inclusion framework is ambitious, a global funding shortfall threatens its effective implementation, coupled with the huge exclusion of Eritrean refugees from the plan. This highlights the limitation that digital identity systems can only enable inclusion if they are accompanied by legal and administrative measures that ensure access for all eligible persons.

The Ethiopia Makatet plan is an example of how a digital ID program can be used to include refugees in the host country’s formal economy and service delivery systems.

At the ID4Africa 2026 AGM in May, speakers re-echoed the same idea, with a UNHCR official calling on governments to make their identity systems more inclusive for refugees and stateless persons. This, he emphasized, does not only open up services to these categories of persons, but equally gives them the chance to contribute to the economic development of the host country.

Article Topics

Digital Ethiopia 2030  |  digital ID  |  Ethiopia  |  Ethiopia National ID Program (NIDP)  |  Fayda  |  legal identity  |  refugee registration  |  SDG 16.9