2.8B still excluded from digital ID as new gender gaps emerge: World Bank

An estimated 2.8 billion people worldwide remain shut out from government-recognized digital ID systems, creating what the World Bank describes as a new divide in the digital economy.

While traditional physical identification gaps have steadily narrowed, the World Bank’s ID4D Global Dataset 2025: Trends in Identification for Development reveals that the advancement toward digital services is birthing new inequities.

Notably, while the global gender gap for standard legal IDs has closed among adults for the first time on record, a persistent gender disparity is re-emerging in digital identity ownership and usage.

In several middle-income countries women are now significantly less likely than men to own or use digital IDs. In countries such as Jordan, Türkiye and Ukraine researchers found notable gender gaps in digital identity adoption.

It’s a pattern the authors posit could be a result of lower rates of female smartphone ownership and digital literacy, but they say more data is needed to unpack the disparity.

Even where digital identity infrastructure exists, the report uncovers a pronounced gap between official rollout and actual daily use. In Vietnam, for instance, more than 70 percent of adults hold a digital ID yet fewer than 20 percent have ever used it, according to the report. In Türkiye, despite an 80 percent ownership rate, usage drops to roughly 50 percent.

Authors Saniya Ansar, Julia Michal Clark and Jorin Margaux Wolff warn that because digital ID systems rely on paper or physical foundational IDs to onboard users, deploying digital credentials without fixing underlying paper-based gaps risks deepening social divides.

Rather than expanding inclusion, digital ID systems risk serving only the population that is already documented, further pushing marginalized groups to the sidelines.

Progress on paper, concentration in Africa

Efforts to provide basic legal identification have yielded steady progress over the past decade. The total number of people without any proof of legal identity fell to 800 million in 2025, down from 850 million in 2021 and 1 billion in 2017. South Asia led the recent gains, driven by notable progress in India, Bangladesh and Nepal.

However, these gains remain profoundly uneven. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) now accounts for more than half of the global total, with over 400 million people lacking legal identification.

While nearly all other regions worldwide have reached near-universal coverage, Sub-Saharan Africa remains the slowest to improve, with coverage in Eastern and Middle Africa stagnating at around 41 percent.

At the digital level, the gap in Sub-Saharan Africa mirrors its physical counterpart: as of 2024, only four nations in the region — Benin, Cabo Verde, Mauritius and Uganda — offered operational access to government digital ID systems.

The cost of being undocumented

Of the 800 million people globally lacking legal proof of identity, an estimated 450 million are children whose births were never formally registered.

For adults, the absence of an ID carries severe real-world consequences. According to 2025 Global Findex data cited in the study, lacking proof of legal identity traps individuals, disabling them from formal systems. It disproportionately affects rural residents, low-income earners and people with less formal education.

The study, funded by the Digital Public Infrastructure and Services Multi-Donor Trust Fund, outlines priority actions for governments worldwide. The authors emphasize that policy makers must address both foundational civil registration and digital ID capabilities simultaneously.

This will ensure digital public infrastructure delivers meaningful value to all citizens rather than reinforcing existing inequalities. The full report can be downloaded here.

Article Topics

digital ID  |  digital public infrastructure  |  Identification for Development (ID4D)  |  legal identity  |  SDG 16.9