Plans to have a universal identity number for all Tanzanians from birth, are in the offing and expected to be completed by the end of 2025. This was revealed on March 08, 2024, at Tanzania’s Conference of Financial Institutions (COFI), an annual event that gathers top executives from Tanzania’s financial sector.
“The president has directed us to make sure we have a unique ID for the whole population and this work is ongoing under the collaboration between the Ministry of Information and the National Identification Authority (NIDA),” revealed Engineer Benedict Benny Ndomba, the Director General of the e-Government Authority.
“They are working together to come up with Jamii Namba [Socia Number] which will uniquely identify Tanzanians from birth and foreigners from entry to exit,” added Ndomba.
Ndomba was responding to a question from a member of the audience who asked if the government has plans to ensure children are included in the national identity number.
The plans to come up with a universal identity number were initiated by a directive from President Samia Suluhu on August 10, 2023. President Samia was irritated by multiple identity numbers used to identify Tanzanians, from birth certificate number, national identity number, driving licenses, passport numbers, health insurance numbers, tax identity number among others.
“People have so many identity cards in our country,” the Head of State complained. “If you go to the banks, you find this information about Samia; if you go to the hospitals, you find that information about Samia. But can we harmonise these identities and create a single Samia identity?”
“This lack of a unified identification also threatens our national security,” President Samia explained. “We want to know who is who; we want to be able to tell a citizen from a foreigner. It’ll spare our people a lot of inconvenience.”
In the Conference of Financial Institutions (COFI), the failure of the National Identity Authority to provide ID numbers to the majority of Tanzanians was mentioned as one of the setbacks to banks and the telecom sector in designing suitable products for Tanzanians of whom a significant number use identity number not belonging to them in accessing various services such as sim card ownership.
It’s yet to be clear how the process will look like in providing Jamii Number but the team behind the process is confident on the progress attained. This was also communicated by Dr. John Sausi, Director of Financial Management Information Systems at the Ministry of Finance and Planning.
“As we speak the technical team is in place and we have so far finished the design. This is done in collaboration between RITA, NIDA, and Zanzibar ID. We expect the process to be concluded at the end of 2025,” clarified Dr Sausi.
