COVID-19 Africa Watch talks to Tunde Fafunwa, Lead Advisor for the UNECA Digital Centre for Excellence, about the importance of digital identity for economic recovery.

Key Takeaways

The following are a few of the main takeaways from COVID-19 Africa Watch’s conversation with Tunde Fafunwa, Lead Advisor for the UNECA Digital Centre for Excellence:

• The pandemic has accelerated the transition to a cashless society. With the restrictions on movement set in place in response to the pandemic, online digital transactions have quickly become the easiest way to find information, receive services, and perform financial transactions. In many cases, performing online transactions requires digital identification.
• Digital identification can reduce the digital divide and improve access. It is a cornerstone of financial inclusion. Digital identification can make it easier for women, minorities, and populations at risk to access financial tools, payment systems, and government benefits.
• A significant challenge to conducting widespread registration for digital IDs is that less than 30% of new births on the continent are recorded with birth certificates. It is difficult for individuals without birth certificates to procure foundational IDs. Nonetheless, it is possible to conduct widespread registration and creation of digital IDs using other kinds of records, such as election records and population databases.
• The rollout of an identification system in today’s environment involves a higher degree of financial regulation, security overviews, data privacy safeguards, internal administration, and political will than it did ten years ago in India, for example. For digital ID systems to be successful in Africa and to realize their potential, there is a clear need to elaborate these systems with strong political leadership and with inputs from a broad range of stakeholders.

The interview was conducted by Esther Kamwimba Siyanda, an IFC-Milken Institute Capital Market Scholar from the Ministry of Finance of Zambia.