The global landscape of identification(ID) is changing rapidly. Technology is making it cheaper toidentify people accurately, while the opportunities of thedigital era are making it more important to be able to proveone’s identity. The role of ID systems has become essentialin areas ranging from financial inclusion, socialprotection, migration, and even coping with naturaldisasters. Based on the World Bank’s identification fordevelopment (ID4D) program’s database, more than 40 percentof those lacking IDs in the world live in Africa. For thefirst time, the World Bank is planning to provide financialsupport and technical assistance to ID systems in Africa;this is an area in which it has had marginal involvementuntil now. The knowledge base related to ID systems inAfrica has expanded dramatically. Applying a standardizedassessment approach, the World Bank has financed more than20 country reports and produced a synthesis report covering17 of them. This publication draws from those reports aswell as primary and secondary sources to provide a briefsketch of the foundational ID system in 48 Africancountries. The brief also confirms that the gaps in thelegal and institutional environment that were found in thesubset of countries covered in the synthesis report arerepresentative of the wider African context. This volumerepresents a very small step toward increasing theunderstanding of the rapidly changing landscape of IDsystems in Africa.
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