Africa’s digital ID ecosystem needs more transparency to protect human rights: report
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# Africa’s digital ID ecosystem needs more transparency to protect human rights: report
Atlantic Council hosts discussion on improving outcomes with due diligence
Nov 19, 2025, 5:37 pm EST | Chris Burt
Categories Biometrics News | ID for All | In Depth
The speed and scale of biometrics and digital ID expansion across Africa may be necessary to meet United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16.9 by enabling everyone in the world to prove their legal identity. But hasty decisions and processes have already led to exclusion and other human rights violations, according to researchers, and could easily continue to do so.
The Atlantic Council’s Democracy + Tech Initiative convened a discussion of “Biometrics in Africa: The market behind digital identity” on Wednesday to examine this challenge, and the findings of a new report on the human rights implications of how the continent’s digital identity ecosystem is coming together.
There are 49 countries in Africa operating at least one biometric system. The infrastructure behind digital identities in African nations “is often developed with limited transparency, weak data protection and minimal public oversight,” says Atlantic Council Democracy + Tech Initiative Senior Research Fellow Iria Puyosa.
Paradigm Initiative Programmes Officer Sani Suleiman was lead author of the report on “Biometrics and digital identification systems in Africa: Assessment of governance, vendors, and human rights.”
Suleiman notes that there is a significant body of research looking at the governance of biometrics in Africa, but less examination of the vendor ecosystem, particularly from within the continent.
Thirty-five African countries use biometrics in elections, Suleiman notes, but there is “a huge gap in the governance itself,” including a lack of redress mechanisms.
The “outsized role of global vendors and the structural dependencies that it creates,” with just a few, mostly European countries, at the top of a pyramid-shaped vendo