By Ayang MacDonald, Biometric update

Flashback about 30 years ago, Somalia had no functional national ID system. Legal identity in this Horn of Africa nation was a far-fetched dream for many. But since 2023, the country has a different story, an ambitious story of a country poised for progress in the implementation of an inclusive and effective national digital ID system despite several challenges.

In an interview on the sidelines of the ID4Africa 2025 AGM recently, the Director General of Somalia’s National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA), Abdiwali Ali Abdulle, painted a picture of a country that is fully engaged in its identity development journey despite huge infrastructural, security, and awareness problems.

He explained that NIRA, under the guidance of the government, is hard at work, combining technology, partnerships, and field-level proactiveness, to build a national ID system that will revolutionize how citizens access services.

About 85 percent of citizens in the country currently have no legal identity, NIRA says, many of them lacking feeder documents like birth certificates which is the natural starting point. Somalia’s population is estimated at 19.7 million citizens.

Road covered so far

For many decades, Somalia struggled with a fragmented national ID system until 2019 when the government took the bold decision to put in place a unified legal ID architecture. This, among other things, required introducing regulatory and governance frameworks to guide the system’s implementation.

“After several consultations, the cabinet and the two chambers of parliament approved the identification and data protection laws, which went into effect in 2023. This permitted us to launch the new national ID system which is a reliable and robust system that meets all international standards and best practices,” Abdulle said.

Since then, he says NIRA has made considerable progress. “We have made progress in the legal framework, in technology readiness, in enrolment, and also in use.

Recently, we launched the Hubiye and e-Aqoonsi platforms as part of efforts to bring all services together and make identity verification and authentication easier.”

Hurdles on the way

This journey Somalia has embarked on has not been smooth. Abdulle says from lack of public awareness and technical interoperability, to issues of security and accessibility, the challenges have been legion.

He says an acute lack of understanding by Somali citizens of digital ID concepts due to three decades without a formal ID system, the siloed nature of government databases and lack of standardization in interoperability, have been a major hurdle. He also mentioned that insecurity in conflict-affected areas in the country limits reach, and the absence of physical infrastructure such as roads and electricity are hampering efforts aimed at broad-based ID registration.

Somalia has suffered years of insecurity and political instability, with most of the countryside not under the control of the government in Mogadishu.

Reaching the 15 million target by year-end

These challenges notwithstanding, Abdulle believes they are on the right track and is bullish about their ability to issue up to 15 million national digital IDs before this year runs out.

“We have adopted implementation strategies that are guiding us to reach that target. We are setting up registration offices across the country, and we have also put in place mobile teams that move from one community to another to take care of those who are not able to access the fixed registration sites,” he said.

He added: “We are also partnering with other government entities and banks to help us reach citizens. We are also collaborating with telecoms operators and partnering with different institutions across government and private sector to help us enroll more people.”

“NIRA is leveraging their services to reach many people. So, there are strategies in place. With regard to the diaspora, we are working to set up offices in our embassies very soon so that citizens abroad can enroll. Where it is not possible, we are trying to get reliable partners to work with us on these aspects to register citizens on our behalf,” the NIRA boss mentioned.

Beyond domestic partnerships, Abdulle says their ID program also has enormous support from some international organizations and foreign countries.

“The biggest partner we have is the World Bank which is supporting us financially and technically throughout the process, from policy adoption to legislation, operationalization, procurement of hardware, and technical support.”

“For countries, we have Pakistan’s NADRA. We are working with them. They are helping us by providing the system and some hardware. They are actually our technology partner, per se. We also have other partners like the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) which are providing capacity-building and technical support in specific areas.”

One major problem NIRA faces on the field is the lack of birth certificates by many citizens which makes enrollment for national ID difficult. However, Abdulle says they are finding a way around the hurdle by accepting alternative documents like passports and academic certificates. In cases where no document exists at all, witnesses can vouch for individuals to confirm their nationality.

“We accept passports, secondary school and university certificates, as well as all government-issued documents to onboard people. For those who don’t have documents, we use witnesses to testify if they are who they claim to be,” he explained.

Digitizing civil registration is part of future plans

Looking ahead, the NIRA chief says they want to build a system that is truly inclusive and which makes public and private sector service delivery seamless.

This means expanding ID adoption is part of their plans, in line with the 2030 SDG 16.9 target. “We will continue to do that [enroll citizens]. We have a large rural population that doesn’t have any form of documentation. This will be an opportunity for them to get a legal ID for free and be able to access all services, be it government services, private services, or services from international organizations or humanitarian groups,” he said.

Efforts, he says, are also being made to reverse the current low rate of civil registration in the country, namely by digitizing the system and harmonizing it for efficiency. Abdulle also mentioned the recent launch of a National Digital Transformation Plan which places huge emphasis on the building of safe, inclusive and interoperable digital public infrastructure.

“We are doing well, but digital integration and connectivity remains a big issue. The government is working toward advancing digital public infrastructure,” he said, adding that it is focusing on improving system integration and connectivity.

Source: biometricupdate.com