Côte d’Ivoire has launched a feasibility study for a national digital authentication platform and a digital identity wallet, with recommendations and an implementation roadmap expected by the end of January 2027.
The study is being run by the Projet d’appui au renforcement de l’administration électronique (PARAE), a government e-administration program, with support from the African Development Bank. It was launched in Abidjan on Monday at a ceremony co-chaired by Interior and Security Minister Vagondo Diomandé and Djibril Ouattara, minister of digital transition and technological innovation.
The study is to define how the state can provide a national capability to authenticate people and verify identity attributes online, so that citizens and residents can access services, assert rights and meet obligations digitally. It will examine different levels of identity assurance and authentication scenarios, as well as digital credentials such as civil status records, diplomas and permits. The government counted 620 digital public services in September, 59 of them classed as priorities.
Diomandé said the state must “establish and guarantee trust in the identity of persons,” with the level of assurance matched to the risk of each transaction to counter fraud and impersonation. He set out three safeguards for the system: data minimization, control over the traces that use generates, and limits on linking a person’s activity across services.
“We are not starting from scratch,” Ouattara said. The study will assess existing infrastructure, including the Registre national des personnes physiques (RNPP), the national register of natural persons in place since 2019; the services of ONECI, the national civil registration and identification office; shared government digital infrastructure; and the reference data of the national health insurance fund, CNAM. ONECI already offers a digital version of the national identity card through its MyONECI+ app, and in 2021 the country partnered with GenKey on biometric national eID cards that store fingerprint data as a protected template.
Ouattara said citizens should no longer have to submit documents that an administration already holds. ONECI, the national health insurance fund, the telecoms regulator, the national information systems security agency and several other state technical agencies have been invited to take part in consultations, which began on the day of the launch. PARAE coordinator Bassoumarifou Sanogo said the consultations will be followed by a diagnostic phase, scenario analysis and recommendations.
Sources: Fraternité Matin, Agence Ecofin
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
