(Dr. Joseph Atick, Eliud Owalo, and Julius Bitok on stage at ID4Africa 2023) In Kenya , the idea of a national identity comes with a colonial history that involved exploitation and control. The kipande was an early, brutal instance of biometrics being used for oppression: an ID document, including fingerprints and work history, that British colonizers forced Kenyan men over 15 to wear around their necks in a metal case, to control and restrict their movements. Despite those historical associations , a national digital ID that consolidates citizens’ personal data into a single source is both necessary and inevitable. So argues the country’s Cabinet Secretary for Information, Communications and the Digital Economy, Eliud Owalo , in a recent opinion piece for The Standard. “In my estimation, the current pace of technological advancement now automating and digitalizing every conceivable service and process will render analogue paper IDs obsolete by 2030,” Owalo writes. “The old way of doing things is dying. Those who do not change with the rest of the world must accept to become irrelevant.” Owalo’s points against physical IDs are numerous and familiar to anyone who has ever fumbled with multiple identification cards. “We variously carry up to […]
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