Addis Ababa, 26 November 2021 – A four day Expert Group Meeting of African Registrar Generals and Director Generals of Civil Registration has officially begun in Kigali, Rwanda. The meeting that runs between November 23 – 26 is organized by…
Research ICT Africa and the Centre for Internet and Society (Delhi, India) partnered in 2021 to examine the design, development, governance, and implementation of evolving socio-digital identity ecosystems in ten African countries. (We explained the background to and reasons for…
Podcast host: W. Gyude Moore The scope and sophistication of ID systems have advanced remarkably in the last 20 years, with over 60 developing countries establishing national ID programs. And digital technologies, such as biometrics, have dramatically expanded the capabilities…
By Abdul Noormohamed, Luminate’s Africa Director Over half of African children are legally unregistered, thereby lacking legal documentation that excludes them from civic life. Here is a look at the journey and strategies employed to support such individuals in East…
The regional consultations organized by the African Union and UNICEF in June and July 2021 show that progress has been made despite COVID-19, but that drastic measures are needed to achieve the SDG goal of universal birth registration. Dakar, 9th…
By Marie Toulemonde Across Africa, passports are often more expensive than elsewhere, open fewer doors and are manufactured by foreign companies. Here’s our detailed look at passports across the continent. No less than 110,000 CFA francs (about $194). This is…
Darren Ekema Ewumbue Monono Pan African University, Institute of Governance, Humanities and Social Sciences Abstract The right to nationality, enshrined in art 15 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, is absent in the 1981 African Charter on Human and…
Bronwen Manby, ‘Naturalization in African states: its past and potential future’, Citizenship Studies, 25:4, 514-542, DOI: 10.1080/13621025.2021.1926098 The existing literature on the grant of citizenship by naturalization largely focuses on the experience of Europe and the immigrant-founded states of the…
By Nanjala Nyabola The move toward digitizing identity and biometrics will only make existing systemic bias harder to crack. The future of travel is up in the air. As countries and companies attempt to define what safety looks like in…
Edited by Séverine Awenengo Dalberto & Richard Banégas In the context of a global biometric turn, this book investigates processes of legal identification in Africa ‘from below,’ asking what this means for the relationship between citizens and the state. Almost…
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, April 29, 2021 (ECA) – The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and its partners have developed a new framework that is aimed at transforming the way African countries build their Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) systems.…
Extracts relevant to Africa: Mobilizing governments and civil society Following a 2020 petition for the recognition of the stateless Pemba as Kenyan nationals hearings were held, in February and March 2021, by the Parliamentary Committee on Administration and National Security…