[Editor’s note 01/29/26: This article has been updated to include information about the Iritech biometric enrollment hardware supporting Madagascar’s national digital identity pilot.]
Madagascar has begun a pilot enrollment phase for a national biometric digital identity program, starting in the Antsimondrano district as part of a broader effort to assign a National Unique Identification Number (NUI) to citizens.
The pilot is positioned as the first step toward nationwide biometric enrollment. The rollout is being managed under the Ministry of Digital Development, Posts and Telecommunications, working with the National Office for Identification (ONI), according to local reporting and an announcement shared by Orange actu Madagascar.
Madagascar’s stated targets and operational details point to a large-scale deployment. The program aims to enroll 2 million people in urban areas between April and June 2026, with an additional expansion to roughly 8 million people in rural areas later in 2026. The biometric modalities cited for capture include fingerprints, a facial image, and iris.
According to information shared with ID Tech, the enrollment and authentication process for the pilot is supported by iris capture hardware supplied by IriTech. The company’s IriAegis-BK device is being deployed as part of the field enrollment infrastructure, supporting iris-based biometric capture alongside the other modalities referenced in the program.
Operational planning referenced in the reports includes an estimated 2,500 enrollment kits and 1,729 enrollment centers. Teams are described as working six days per week, with a target throughput of around 40 registrations per agent per day. If sustained, that pace would support the program’s near-term enrollment goals while creating pressure on staffing, logistics, and quality control processes such as deduplication and exception handling.
National digital identity programs frequently rely on distributed enrollment models to reach a broad population, and the use of multiple biometric modalities can be intended to improve matching accuracy and reduce the risk of duplicate identities. The combination of fingerprints, face, and iris, along with a unique identifier such as an NUI, typically supports a wider range of downstream use cases, from credential issuance to service access, provided governance and data protection requirements are met.
The scale of the planned enrollment and the number of kits and centers described indicate that Madagascar is moving beyond planning stages into a field rollout that will require sustained operational capacity through 2026.
Sources: L’Express de Madagascar, Orange actu Madagascar (LinkedIn)
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By Ali Nassar-Smith
