Sierra Leone on Wednesday launched a National Digital Identity Platform, making it the first country in Africa to have a Blockchain national identification system.
President Julius Maada Bio presided over the symbolic launching which took place at Radisson Blu Mamy Yoko Hotel in Freetown.
According to a news released from the presidency, the move is in fulfilment of a promise made by the president at the 73rd Session of the UN General Assembly in New York last year. Bio back then announced a partnership with the UN and KIVA, a US-based financial services international nonprofit organisation, to launch a bold new initiative designed to give the country’s seven million citizens access to financial services.
“Today, less than one year after, I am pleased to announce that we have accomplished that objective. My Government has developed a National Digital Identity Platform (NDIP). I am informed, and I announce with pride, that this is Africa’s first Blockchain and Decentralised National Digital Identity System”, he said, noting that the advent would radically change Sierra Leone’s financial inclusion landscape and make it possible to access and deliver economic and other opportunities to every citizen.
President Bio also said that the platform, developed by the National Civil Registration Authority with support from KIVA, was a digital infrastructure to help citizens grant access to approved institutions to assert and verify identity and also build credit histories.
“It will be implemented in two steps: First, we will digitise identities, and secondly we will use that digital identity as the unique nationally recognized identifier called the National Identification Number that is non duplicating and non-reusable around which the credit reporting and lookup apparatus is built as well as a unique source of reference for every service delivery in the country. Step 1 – has been completed; Step 2 will be completed by the end of this year,” the president said.
In his welcome statement, earlier, Director General of NCRA, Mohamed Mubashir Massaquoi, said the event was a milestone that would better position the people of Sierra Leone to become productive through an increasingly digital and connected world, adding that it also signalled the government’s willingness to embrace scalable and socially impactful technology especially for purposes of reducing information asymmetry and alleviating challenges associated with social and economic exclusions.
”This is a unique approach by President Bio to leverage the tremendous potential of technology, data science, and artificial intelligence in making data-driven analyses and decisions, and scaling up solutions to society’s problems. This inter-link, with strong policy-making, problem-solving, and innovative application of technology, is beginning to have a transformative effect on the lives of all Sierra Leoneans,” he said.
A representative from the United Nations Development Programme, Samuel Doe, said he was excited to join the Government of Sierra Leone to launch the NDIP. He stated that the Government had successfully developed the system, with record speed, since the signing of the MoU in September last year.
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