Developing Countries Using India's Aadhaar-Like Unique ID Programme To Provide Digital Identities To Their Citizens

Several countries have either adopted or shown interests in the Aadhaar-like unique identity programme developed by Bengaluru-based International Institute of Information Technology.

The open-source national foundational identity platform, called the Modular Open-Source Identity Platform (MOSIP) is currently being used by six countries including Sri Lanka, Morocco, the Philippines and Ethiopia to provide digital identities to their citizen, reports Economic Times.

MOSIP helps user organisations such as governments implement a digital, foundational ID in a cost effective way, while embracing the best practices of scalability, security and privacy harnessing the power of open source.

Being modular in its architecture, MOSIP provides lot of flexibility in how they implement and configure their foundation ID system.

The platform is a unique, universal, and progressive digital identity system which is also an open source platform that nations can reuse freely and build their own identity systems.

The programme is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BGMF), Tata Trusts, Norad, and Omidyar Network, which have cumulatively provided Rs 150 crore in funding.

In Morocco, around 150,000 people out of the 36 million population in the country have been issued unique identity numbers.

Several other countries including Uganda, Nigeria and Tunisia have shown interests in using MOSIP.

According to the ET report, the IIIT-B aims to provide unique identity numbers to around a billion people across the world in the next couple of years.

The MOSIP version 1.0 was released in 2020 and countries began experimenting and sandboxing it.

Philippines started using the platform in the later part of 2020 and early 2021.

After Philippines, Morocco was the second nation to go live with the platform, followed by several other countries including Sri Lanka, Guinea, and Togo.