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Digital IDs for South African citizens are going to play a central role in the government’s efforts to reinvent itself through digital services, according to President Cyril Ramaphosa.
In the 2025 state of the nation speech to parliament on Thursday, Ramaphosa said digitisation of government services is critical to its “reform agenda.”.
This initiative includes driving economic growth through investment in next-generation industries, minimising corruption by abolishing manual systems in various organs of state, and improving the accessibility of government services through digital channels.
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“We will invest in digital public infrastructure to give South Africans access to government services anytime, anywhere, through a relaunched gov.za platform,” Ramaphosa said in his address. “At the heart of this transformation will be the implementation of a digital identity system. These measures will … create one government that is accessible to every person at a touch.”
These sound like lofty ambitions, but South Africa will not be the first government to digitise its services in this way—and there are plenty of lessons that can be drawn upon from other countries.
A digital identity is a digital representation of a citizen’s personal information, including their ID number. Digital identities can be made up of several data points, including biometric data, usernames and passwords, identity numbers, driver’s licenses, and dates of birth. They can also include account information (profiles and linked accounts) and device information (device IDs and IP addresses).
By having a secure digital identity, citizens can access services quickly and easily, provided they can verify themselves. In most instances, verification is carried out using biometric tools such as a fingerprint reader or facial recognition technology. This removes the need for people to carry physical IDs, which are expensive to create and are vulnerable to loss or theft.
In countries where digital identities are already commonplace, a driver at a roadblock need only scan their finger on a biometric reader to confirm their particulars, including possession of a valid driver’s license. Similarly, applications for government jobs or other social services would not need to be accompanied by certified copies of IDs.
Countries that have led the way in deploying national digital identity systems have seen benefits including efficiency and cost savings. According to an article on the Global Government Forum website, Estonia has had a mandatory digital ID system in place for over 20 years.
Katrin Vaga, head of international public relations for the E-Residency Project at Estonian investment agency Enterprise Estonia, said the digital ID system has made Estonia “almost free of bureaucracy as a society.”.
“For me, as somebody who has grown up during this period of digital transformation in my own country, I have seen how this digital identification system was built, step by step, and how everything was done so that every participant of our society would win from the experience,” said Vaga.
There are benefits closer to home as well. Botswana, for example, replaced manual systems with biometric enrolment for pensions and social grants. According to a World Bank brief on digital identity, this resulted in 25% savings for the state through the identification of duplicate records and deceased beneficiaries. Similar efforts in Nigeria have reduced the federal pension roll by 40%, the brief said.
Home affairs minister Leon Schreiber welcomed Ramaphosa’s Sona announcements. In a statement, he said that through digital identities, home affairs will act as the “linchpin for the digital transformation of government.”.
Schreiber said home affairs will, over the next 12 months:
- Build the first components of digital ID to eliminate identity fraud, expand social and financial inclusion, and ensure access for all “at a touch”;
- Launch a modern Electronic Travel Authorisation system—driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning—to automate the issuing of tourist and short-stay visas; and
- Implement the Trusted Tour Operator Scheme to boost tourism from the burgeoning source markets of China and India.
“Our five-year vision to deliver Home Affairs @ home, as announced in September last year, is built entirely around the digitalisation and automation of all services and processes, in alignment with the president’s announcement,” said Schreiber.
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