‘This is the dawn of the second decade in our pursuit of Identity for All in Africa,’ declared Dr Joseph Atick, Executive Chairman of ID4Africa, in his opening address at the Movement’s 2025 Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
‘This is also the decade of Africa’s self-reliance,’ he continued. ‘The time has come for the continent to look more deeply inward: to trust in its own capabilities and prioritise securing its assets and interests. Now is the time to draw strength from Africa’s roots.’ To this end, Dr Atick announced the introduction of a new core principle to guide the Movement’s work: ‘From Africa, For Africa, In Africa’.
‘This is more than just a slogan: it’s a declaration of purpose, reaffirming our commitment to ‘Africa First’ in all that we do,’ he said.
This new principle was clearly reflected in the agenda for this year’s AGM, which covered four days (20-23 May) and several thematic areas – including digital identity, development/ governance guardrails, legal identity/ civil registration, digital public infrastructure/digital public goods, data protection and privacy, finance, travel and health.
‘Compared to 2024, we have achieved a more than 100% increase in the number of African speakers, and a 60% expansion in the number of African countries featured,’ said Dr Atick.
The design for this year’s programme was drawn from the ID4Africa Identity Ecosystem Self-Evaluation Framework (IESEF), a confidential, internal tool developed in collaboration with – and for use by – the 48 ID4Africa Ambassadors Bureaus, which comprise senior government officials from each member country.
The IESEF quantitatively analyses the state of development of each member’s digital identity landscape across 140 key performance indicators, grouped into 12 domains – including inclusion, digital ID and digitalisation, robustness and trust, use and interoperability, privacy and data protection, and infrastructure and enabling environments.
‘38 out of our 48 member states completed the exercise in time to influence this year’s agenda. The analysis provided us with an enormous amount of data from across the continent which we used to craft an Africa First programme,’ said Dr Atick.
The IESEF analysis identified three clusters of countries: high-scoring countries, generally progressing at twice the speed of the second, mid- scoring cluster, and a third cluster which, despite limited resources, is nonetheless moving forward with digital identity adoption – though at a slower pace.
11 of the high-scoring countries – Mauritania, Tanzania, Benin, Somalia, Malawi, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Mauritius, Morocco – shared their progress and insights on the first morning of the AGM.
Africa is generally regarded as more innovative than other continents in certain areas of digital identity, largely because it has bigger constraints to deal with. One such game-changing innovation was presented at the 2025 AGM.
‘I’m excited to say that we’re now witnessing the birth of a new physical, secure credential in Africa that is low cost and inclusive,’ said Dr Atick. ‘It’s basically a piece of paper with a standard QR code on it, but embedded within that code is the face of the holder, which is of a high enough quality to bind holder to credential.
The code is subsequently scanned with a smartphone to reveal the face of the holder for matching purposes.
‘Then added to the code could be the issuing party’s digital signature and cryptography to form a visible digital seal (VDS). The signature can be verified offline using the issuer’s public key, in order to confirm the code hasn’t been tampered with and originates from a trusted source.’ He continued: ‘this solution is intended for the millions of people on the continent who cannot afford US$2 for a credential. While the technology itself was developed outside of Africa, nowhere is it more needed than on this continent.
‘The idea is to enable people to use this credential to obtain social benefits and allowances, which could amount to the equivalent of US$10-$50. In such cases, highly secure smartcards are not needed. Smartcards still have their place, of course, but for higher value transactions and higher risk environments.’ Dr Atick identified four breakthroughs that have allowed QR codes and off-the-shelf technologies to serve identity needs:
1. The selfie becoming a default method of remote identity verification, in tandem with the proliferation of mobile phones.
2. Biometric binding carried out with a standard camera capturing a facial image, rather than using specialised hardware.
3. Digital signature cryptography that allows relying parties to confirm data has not been tampered with through a scan.
4. Image compression, using widely available, royalty-free compressor formats, such as WebP, which create good quality images that are small enough to fit into a QR code.
During ID4Africa, Patrick Grother, Biometric Testing Project Lead from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), presented the findings of tests to assess the matching accuracy of VDS-stored face data using off-the-shelf compressors.
The findings were very positive, culminating in the NIST’s validation of the technology.
One country that has already implemented a ‘face in QR’ solution is Côte d’Ivoire, where QR codes bound to individuals are used to allow people in border areas to make short trips out of the country and back. The low-cost credentials are printed with a laser printer, and if they are lost or damaged, they can easily be replaced.
In many ways, Africa is leading the adoption of visible digital seals, according to Dr Atick, because its governments and businesses need to be ‘ingenious in trying to create a lowcost solution’.
Another challenge in Africa pertains to how it can accelerate the delivery of identity and birth registration to all by 2030, in line with UN Sustainable Development Goal 16.9.
‘The current projections in sub-Saharan Africa say that by 2030 we will only be at 60%,’ said Dr Atick. ‘So we’ve been looking for ways to scale the use of digital identity systems by increasing both the supply and demand for these systems.’ To this end, he advised that three actionable strategies had been identified: decentralisation, synergy with health services, and twinning ID with civil registration.
The decentralisation strategy, in particular, is in keeping with ID4Africa’s commitment to put the African people first. It involves government officials going to where the people are, rather than having the people spend a whole day getting to a government office just to have a birth registered or obtain a document.
‘It could be a travelling salesman model for service delivery,’ said Dr Atick. ‘It’s actually a beautiful topic in Africa because it’s saying, ‘let’s be ingenious’. Let’s look at places where we can share infrastructure in the village, such as a school building during the evening.
‘This is what ID4Africa is all about. We’re not about stacks. We’re not about infrastructure.
We’re about people. We’re about how they feel about their society and what they want their society to do so that they can function in it.
‘If I could leave you with one message, it’s that we’re a bottom-up organisation. We never start with a model and look at how we can impose it on anybody. We start with the problem and build solutions based on that problem. If a solution can subsequently be leveraged somewhere else, so much the better, but first and foremost... solve someone’s problem.’
That’s ID4Africa!
The hosts for ID4Africa 2026 AGM will be the government of Côte d’Ivoire and the Office National de l’Etat Civil et de l’Identification de Côte d’Ivoire (ONECI). The event will be held in Abidjan in early May.
The recorded plenaries and symposiums from ID4Africa 2025 can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/id4africamedia and the conference website is at https://id4africaevents.com
