Digitising national identity is not the solution you think it is
Published: 16/Oct/2026
Source: Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg)
Governments across Africa are rushing to digitise national identity systems. They promise administrative efficiency and economic inclusion but rolling out biometric databases with unbridled state dependency on commercial players and ignorance of constitutional realities merely perpetuates historical inequality
By Earl Joseph & Stanley Moloto
An affluent banking client walks into a quiet commercial branch in Sandton, an upmarket suburb north of Johannesburg, South Africa, to renew a Smart ID card. She completes the biometric capture in 10 minutes over a complementary coffee. A few kilometres away in Alexandra, a low-income township, an elderly pensioner joins an early morning queue outside a department of home affairs office, waiting in the biting cold only to be turned away when the computer network collapses at midday.
The stark contrast captures the central fault line running through Africa’s digital modernisation drive. As governments across the continent accelerate the rollout of digital public infrastructure (DPI), biometric registries and digital identity platforms are celebrated as the ultimate solution to public administrative decay.
In step with the governments, large development finance institutions and technology vendors pile on to the sales pitch as they all evangelise in unison about how digital credentials will unlock economic inclusion and streamline public service delivery.
This is, of course, a false narrative. Behind the promotional roadmaps lies an expensive graveyard of failed rollouts across the continent. Which begs the question: Are these failures simply technological incompetence or is there something more fundamental at play?
During a recent discussion on The Angle Podcast Ep 52 | Capability | Inclusion | Is Digital ID a Trust Issue or a Tech Problem?, Dr Geci Karuri-Sebina, an associate professor in digital governance at the Wits School of Governance, challenged the technocratic assumption that software can replace competent public administration.
Karuri-Sebina put it bluntly: “Digital governance is not just government IT procurement, it is a broader system of how decisions are made and how we agree to operate as a society.
“There is a tendency to believe our challenges are purely technological. But technology cannot bypass basic governance hygiene. We still need institutional accountability, public trust, citizen inclusion and administrative competence. If the underlying governance foundations are broken, deploying new software merely automates that dysfunction.”
The belief that technology can resolve structural political failure is widespread. Political leaders routinely sign continental declarations pledging digital transformation under the African Union’s Agenda 2063.
However, research from the Tayarisha African Centre of Excellence in Digital Governance at the Wits School of Governance working paper series, AI and Digital Governance Politics and Management: A View from the Global South, demonstrates that digital identity systems deployed without democratic safeguards create new mechanisms of social exclusion.
Read further: https://mg.co.za/thought-leader/2026-10-16-digitising-national-identity-is-not-the-solution-you-think-it-is/