Togo’s journey towards national Digital IDs

Edition #6 Togo's journey towards digital IDs has been long and unsteady, but its journey-to-date offers lessons to others attempting the same...

In her first piece for interweave.africa, Fiona Waithira writes about Togo’s long journey towards digital IDs, a journey that has not yet reached its completion. Examining the legal underpinnings of the program, she looks at what other countries can learn from Togo, as well as how the country can ensure a successful rollout going forward.

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Years after the first announcement of its intentions to issue e-IDs to its citizens, the Togolese government has yet to issue the digital credentials, despite its broader strides in mobile penetration and digital governance policies. 

Togo’s digital landscape has grown tremendously in recent years, with mobile penetration increasing from 40% in 2011 to 78% in 2021, and mobile money penetration rising from 0% in 2011 to 58% in 2021. With such growth, the e-ID program - designed for “all citizens aged five and up, to target social protections better and revolutionize service delivery in Togo across a person’s lifespan” - was supposed to be the natural next step in streamlining public services. 

The National Identification Agency of Togo partnered with IDEMIA and Atos to build the infrastructure on which the national biometric e-ID system would sit. The ambition was for these partners to provide a holistic solution with a citizen portal, mobile app, private cloud, the core biometric system, and the provision for personalization of new e-IDs. From a service perspective, the e-ID program would support government operations by improving citizen access to social services and other protection programs, and easing the regular updating of the electoral register. 

In preparation for the e-ID, the Togolese Government was and continues to be keen on steering conversations that will champion data sovereignty. The government has also partnered with the private sector and academia to create a digital ecosystem that will be core in shaping interactions when e-IDs are rolled out.  

However, six years after the announcement of e-ID Togo, the rollout has not exactly gone according to plan. One of the defining features of the e-ID program during its initial roll-out was that it was built on pre-existing forms of ID, such as birth certificates. The trouble is that – in a classic example of service design without the user in mind -  only 25% of the Togolese population has some form of identification, limiting the “user group” significantly. 

Fast forward half a decade, and Togo has relaxed these rules, beginning to enroll citizens without proof of identification. Progress has been slow, but with these changes, the country has finally started to see some incremental success in delivering the ID. The Togolese government's successes – and failures – can serve as useful learnings for other African countries vis-à-vis the policy and infrastructure issues that should be addressed before embarking on similar digital initiatives. 

Building the legal infrastructure for a digital ID

To succeed in its national digitalization plan, Togo Digital 2025, the country instituted a Biometrics Identification Law in 2020, which set in place the regulatory framework to establish the identification and authentication system for all Togolese natural persons.

The Digital ID program is a key component of Togo Digital 2025, announced here by the Togolose President. 

This law provided each natural Togolese with a Unique Identification Number (NIU) based on their demographic and biometric data. It allowed for the setting up of a database for allocating social benefits such as health coverage and government subsidies, and updating the electoral register. 

Through the Biometric Identification Law, the National Identification Agency is mandated to collect demographic and biometric data. The Agency encodes and encrypts the data onto its registry, where it can grant access to authorized agents. Such legal provisions have been important steps toward enhancing data protection and governance of biometric data as Togo transitions to an e-ID system. 

However, pursuing an e-ID has exposed the shortcomings of Togo’s legal landscape when it comes to thinking about digital. The country’s laws currently offer safeguards against unlawful surveillance or unauthorized access to data – one of the few African countries with a definitive legal framework for data protection. 

But in reality, these laws are inconsistent in their application, with provisions made for the interception of communications by the Prime Minister and Ministers of specific ministries, for example. Outliers like this make it difficult to draw the line between what is unlawful to access and what is lawful to intercept, inadvertently infringing on the digital rights of the Togolese people. 

When it comes to national digital transformation, it is necessary to have a robust legal and regulatory regime that promotes privacy and data protection. Some, like Togo, have legal frameworks already set up to cover issues such as authentication and enhancing the resilience of e-IDs while incorporating ethical principles. The African Union Digital ID Policy Framework may serve as a benchmark for those without clear protection laws. 

Delivering a Digital ID

Building a legal framework is only half the battle when it comes to digital, and means little without the digital infrastructure to support targeted use cases, an area in which Togo has had some success. 

Togo is a low-income country with just over 3 million people in its workforce (as of 2022), 92% of whom are in the informal sector. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, the Ministry of Digital Economy and Digital Transformation launched the Novissi cash transfer program to support these informal workers affected by the pandemic. Within a year, Novissi had reached 891,972 beneficiaries and disbursed USD 23.9 million.

To deliver the Novissi program, Togo leveraged its biometric election data for electronic Know-Your-Customer (e-KYC) to deliver social protection to its citizens. KYC is essential in verifying the identity of the customer. Registration to the program was possible through a simple USSD code *885#, with follow-up prompts directing citizens to enter details such as their voter registration number and full name. 

Once registered, a cross-reference was performed to deem eligibility using Novissi’s machine-learning algorithm trained on the population register. Those deemed eligible automatically had their mobile money accounts credited with the funds. Women received $22.64, while men received $19.41 monthly, paid in two instalments.

Normally, the State does not require that every Togolese citizen hold a national ID. Applying for a national ID is expensive, attracting a fee of XOF 5,000 (approximately USD 9), a high price that ultimately serves as a deterrent for many citizens. This is compounded by the fact that applications for national IDs in Togo require proof of birth despite many Togolese citizens not having birth certificates. The cumulation of these issues has made issuance and acquiring national IDs challenging for Togolese citizens.

To overcome such challenges of identity and beneficiary eligibility for Novissi, the government relied on the biometric voter registration (BVR) database, which was last updated in February 2020. The database held the details of over 3 million Togolese citizens with information on their occupation and home location. These details were useful in verifying eligibility for the Novissi social protection program, and may serve as a baseline for future digital ID efforts.

Togo is a prime example of African governments' dynamism and versatility in using technologies and data to benefit their citizens. While Togo has yet to issue e-IDs, they have laid the groundwork to do so, developing a data privacy framework, actively embracing digital partnerships, and looking for ethical ways to collect demographic data from their citizens. Above all, they have tested the value of identification systems in promoting social inclusion, showing the value of interoperability and integration with voter data to locate citizens and distribute social assistance through the Novissi program. 

The impact of these steps remain to be seen, and the proof of the IDs success will be in its delivery, but their ambition speaks to the drive for integrated data and building malleable data systems that will ultimately unlock the potential of digital ID systems in Togo and across Africa.