TECH5 Provides Biometric and Digital ID Solutions for Ethiopia’s National ID Pilot

The government of Ethiopia is launching a new National ID Program (NIDP) in collaboration with TECH5. The Fayida Identity Management System (IDMS) is now entering a limited pilot phase, during which TECH5 and NIDP Ethiopia will gather biometric information and issue digital IDs to participating citizens.

The program is based on the open-source MOSIP platform, and takes advantage of a number of different TECH5 solutions. During the pilot, Ethiopian authorities will collect face, fingerprint, and iris biometrics, and then use TECH5’s biometric SDKs to assess the quality of each image. The government will also use the T5-ABIS to make sure that there are no duplicates in Ethiopia’s National ID database.

Finally, the T5-IDencode solution has been integrated with MOSIP to allow the government to generate and issue Digital IDs to citizens once the registration process is complete. Those digital IDs can be printed or stored electronically on a standard smartphone, and verified with a smartphone app in both online and offline situations. As a result, the IDs can be used as proof of identity (or proof of age) in settings that have traditionally required a physical ID card.

Participants will need to provide basic demographic information (such as name and birth date) when their biometric information is collected. That data will be stored in Ethiopia’s National ID database, though officials stressed that they only collect the information they need to confirm someone’s identity, and that citizens retain full ownership of their personal information. In that regard, the NIDP Program is based on principles of data privacy, minimization, and consent.

“This entire program is aimed at creating and implementing a Foundational Digital ID system for Ethiopia at the national level, the culmination of which results in the enrollment of millions of consenting individuals as part of national priority use-cases in the banking, insurance, education, residential and other sectors,” said NID Executive Director Yodahe Zemichael.

TECH5 fully integrated T5-IDencode with MOSIP in September to better support countries looking to move forward with National ID programs. The Ethiopian program has been trying to develop its own custom MOSIP solution for more than a year.

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January 20, 2022 – by Eric Weiss