The Billion-Dollar Wall: How Biometric IDs Are Locking Africans Out of Their Lives

Across the African continent, a massive technological infrastructure project is underway. It is estimated to cost over $1 billion, funded significantly by World Bank loans and European grants. It involves the harvesting of fingerprints, iris scans, and facial data from hundreds of millions of people.

The promise of these biometric digital ID systems is modernisation: efficient governance, slick service delivery, and a leap into the digital future. But according to a comprehensive new report by the African Digital Rights Network (ADRN) and the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), the reality is far grimmer.

For millions of people, these systems have not become a gateway to services, but a barrier. Instead of inclusion, the report argues, we are seeing the rise of a digital caste system where access to food, voting, and healthcare is conditional on surrendering biometric data to systems that are often insecure, legally ambiguous, and prohibitively expensive.

The Conditionality Trap: “No ID, No Service”

The core of the issue, identified in the report titled ‘Biometric Digital-ID in Africa: Progress and Challenges to Date’, is the mandatory nature of these systems. In many of the ten countries studied, possession of a biometric ID is rapidly becoming a prerequisite for exercising basic human rights.

• Ethiopia: The “Fayda” ID is being aggressively rolled out. As of 1 January 2025, the National Bank of Ethiopia mandated that all bank customers in Addis Ababa must register for a Fayda ID to open an account. By September 2025, it will be a requirement for school registration, fundamentally linking education to biometric surveillance.
• Malawi: The biometric ID is now mandatory for SIM card registration, banking, and even social protection services. The reliance is so heavy that the government has had to allow the use of expired cards until January 2026 because the National Registration Bureau cannot process renewals fast enough.
• Botswana: The “Omang” card is legally required for every citizen over 16 to access almost all civil services.

This creates a paradox: to access social protection payments (welfare) meant to alleviate poverty, citizens often need access to smartphones and connectivity to process their digital IDs. In Liberia, where less than 15% of the population had been registered by late 2024, the push for digital exclusivity threatens to leave the vast majority of the population in legal limbo.

The Surveillance State: Exporting Borders?

One of the most disturbing findings in the report is how these systems are being funded and used for surveillance, often with foreign backing.

In Senegal, the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa poured €28 million into the national biometric database. While ostensibly for civil registration, the report uncovers that the programme’s operational framework explicitly mentions facilitating the identification of “illegal Senegalese nationals” for return. Effectively, European money is building African biometric databases to police migration remotely.

Botswana offers a glimpse into the future of domestic surveillance. The Gaborone City Council has linked its city-wide facial recognition CCTV network directly to the “Omang” national ID database, allowing for real-time identification of citizens in public spaces —a privacy nightmare that few citizens signed up for.

The Billion-Dollar Question: Who Profits?

The drive for biometric IDs appears to be almost entirely top-down, fueled by massive external financing and lucrative contracts for foreign tech firms.

• The Price Tag: In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the cost of the digital ID project ballooned from an initial estimate of $400 million to a staggering $1.2 billion. This massive inflation raised serious questions about overpricing and corruption, eventually leading to the cancellation of agreements.
• The Loans: The World Bank alone has pumped $350 million into Ethiopia’s ID system and $430 million into Nigeria’s.
• The Vendors: The market is dominated by international players. In Côte d’Ivoire, the Belgian firm Semlex charges approximately 5,000 CFA francs (approx. US$8.60) per card. In Botswana, contracts have gone to Veridos (German) and IDEMIA (French).

The Exclusion Crisis

Despite the massive expenditure, the researchers argue that citizens did not ask for these systems. In fact, in several nations, the rollout has been met with protests and public opposition.

The exclusion rates are alarming. In Senegal, roughly 1 million adults (10% of the eligible population) lack the biometric ID required to vote or access services. In Egypt, marginalised groups like Bedouins and Bahá’ís face systemic hurdles to registration, effectively erasing their legal existence.

The Path Forward

Covering ten countries, from Botswana and Namibia to Ethiopia and Tunisia, the report is not opposed to innovation; it concedes digital IDs can be convenient. Its central warning, however, is that the current “deploy first, regulate later” model is high-risk.

The authors conclude that robust legislation must legally precede technological implementation. Namibia, for instance, passed a Civil Registration and Identification Act in 2024, yet it is still waiting on a dedicated data protection law to become operational. Without these legal guardrails, the digitisation of the continent remains a double-edged sword—profitable for vendors, convenient for the state, but potentially devastating for the citizen.