Kenya turns to IN Groupe for national digital identity trust infrastructure

Kenya is exploring a national authentication platform with France’s IN Groupe as part of plans to build trusted digital identity infrastructure that allows citizens to securely access public and private services.

ICT and Digital Economy Cabinet Secretary William Kabogo met IN Groupe Vice President for Government Programs Céline Gouveia to discuss the project, with both sides agreeing to continue technical and policy discussions.

The plan is to establish an interoperable platform that would make identity verification easier by reducing repeated checks and the need to submit personal information more than once.

“We underscored the importance of coordinated governance of Kenya’s digital public infrastructure,” Kabogo explained on social media, adding that the Digital Economy Ministry will oversee the coordination “to ensure systems are interoperable, eliminate duplication and deliver greater value from technology investments.” The Cabinet Secretary also mentioned that “a key priority is building public trust in digital identity and government digital services.”

Implementing a trusted authentication platform is critical for Kenya as the country continues to drive its digital government agenda. In 2023, the government launched a new Directorate of eCitizen Services as part of efforts to expand the eCitizen platform. The Directorate says the platform now provides access to more than 20,000 government services, making service access easier for millions of citizens.

IN Groupe has been involved in Africa’s identity market for many years as countries seek vendors capable of delivering critical digital infrastructure for them. Through Nexus, which is part of the company, it supplied the PKI platform that Kenya’s ICT Authority selected to deploy a Government Certification Authority (GCA) for the country’s National Public Key Infrastructure (NPKI) in 2023.

The involvement of IN Groupe in identity infrastructure projects in Kenya and other African countries and elsewhere around the world shows the growing place of public-private collaboration in DPI development, something the company has been advocating over the years. One of the most recent research findings of the company suggests that digital ID systems enjoy better adoption if their implementation takes the ecosystem approach and multi-sector deployment. The report also shows that identity is a core factor in driving economic growth.

IN Groupe’s sustained presence in Africa, alongside other industry big names like Thales and Semlex, shows that the identity infrastructure market on the continent is increasingly becoming strategic and lucrative especially as a yawning legal identity gap remains, according to an analysis by The Africa Report.

The author however argues that overreliance on foreign firms risks undermining the continent’s digital sovereignty efforts, notably as many countries are increasingly going not just for trusted, but sovereign digital public infrastructure to tie with their strategic national development goals.

Article Topics

Africa  |  biometric authentication  |  digital government  |  digital ID infrastructure  |  IN Groupe  |  Kenya  |  public-private partnerships