Somalia’s ID Deadline Tests the Promise of Digital Inclusion
In a quiet Saturday statement that ignited a very noisy week on the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia’s National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) said it will stop issuing national ID cards for free after October 31, 2025. The line that got people moving was simple: “The National ID Card Registration Fee Exemption Period ends on October 31. Please take advantage of the opportunity and apply at your nearest NIRA Center!”
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Within hours, long queues thickened at registration points across major cities. By Monday morning, the scene had become familiar: plastic chairs in improvised lines, uniformed staff shouting out ticket numbers, clerks wrestling with power cuts and document scanners, and parents juggling restless toddlers with sheaves of paperwork. Officials rolled out crowd-control tactics—numbered slips, revised opening hours, extra staffing—trying to keep the process moving.
What’s at stake
Somalia’s push to register 15 million citizens by 2029 is part of a larger bet on digital identity as the backbone of modern statehood and everyday life. A secure ID can be the difference between waiting and moving on—at a hospital desk, a bank counter, a university admissions office, even a checkpoint. It’s hard to deliver services, fight fraud, or make elections credible when you can’t reliably say who is who.
Once complete, a verified national ID could knit together scattered records and habits: opening a bank account without multiple witnesses; receiving a salary through a phone wallet; accessing social protection payments without middlemen; replacing paper-based bureaucracy with digital verification. For businesses, it could mean lower risk and better credit. For government, it’s a tool against duplication and ghost beneficiaries. For ordinary Somalis, it might be one less document to carry and more doors open.
The rush and its risks
Deadlines concentrate attention, but they also compound inequality. In many districts beyond Mogadishu and regional capitals, getting to a NIRA center can be a day-long undertaking—and that’s before you queue. A fee, even a modest one, can be a barrier for families living day-to-day on informal incomes. The most vulnerable often enroll last and pay most.
NIRA’s announcement was clear about the end of the waiver and silent about the size of the fees that will follow. That uncertainty has driven the current surge but also stirred worry. Without transparent pricing, rumors fill the void—about backdoor charges, about who will be exempted, about whether the ID will become a de facto requirement for basic services in a country where documentation has long been uneven.
There’s a practical bottleneck too. Building a national identity system is as much a logistics exercise as a technological one. Reliable electricity, secure data links, fingerprint and face capture that works across skin tones and ages, and staff who are trained to troubleshoot—all matter. So does a plan for those who have no birth certificate, no formal address, and few documents beyond community testimony.
What the neighbors learned
Somalia is not alone in this. Across the continent and the wider world, governments have raced to build digital IDs—and the lessons rhyme.
- Kenya’s ambitious Huduma Namba project promised a single source of truth, then hit turbulence over privacy concerns and legal challenges. It’s now being rebooted with stronger legal underpinnings.
- Nigeria’s National Identification Number has reached hundreds of millions but still wrestles with backlogs and standardization, especially when linking IDs to SIM cards.
- India’s Aadhaar program enabled sweeping digital payments and welfare transfers, while also sparking a national debate over data protection and exclusion errors.
The biggest takeaway: IDs succeed when they are convenient, clearly governed, and widely trusted. They struggle when their rollout outruns public communication or when the poor are turned into latecomers.
From policy to practice
In the coming months, NIRA will be judged less by its software and more by its service. The head start is meaningful: a fee-free window running through October 31, 2025, and a public message urging people to enroll now. But turning urgency into equity will require a few concrete steps:
- Publish the post-deadline fee schedule early and in Somali and English, so citizens can plan, and rumors don’t become policy by default.
- Expand mobile enrollment units to rural districts and displacement camps, with special outreach to women, elderly people, and those without formal documents.
- Offer fee waivers or subsidies after the deadline for low-income households, students, and people with disabilities—small investments that deliver big inclusion dividends.
- Create a clear appeals process for rejected applications and a pathway for people with no birth records, using community attestations in a consistent way.
- Spell out the data protection safeguards: who sees what, for how long, and under whose oversight. People don’t just want an ID; they want assurance their identity won’t be misused.
- Integrate the ID smoothly into essential services—banks, telecoms, universities, and clinics—without making it a cliff-edge requirement before coverage is wide enough.
More than a card
Peek into a registration room today and you see something beyond a bureaucratic process. You see a teenager steadying her hands on the scanner, determined not to blink for the camera. You see an elderly man patiently spelling his name as an officer double-checks the spelling on screen. You see parents hoping this card will make their children’s school admissions easier or a small-business owner thinking of a first formal loan. These moments are threaded with aspiration: a durable ID is a kind of belonging.
Somalia has built a dynamic mobile money ecosystem—one of the most pervasive in Africa. A robust national ID could take that further, making KYC requirements simpler for banks and lowering costs for remittances that sustain families across the country and diaspora. For a government aiming to expand taxpayer rolls, target social spending, and curb fraud, the identity backbone is essential infrastructure.
After October 31, 2025
When the fee waiver ends, the program will enter a second phase. The test will be whether enrollment continues steadily or drops off sharply among those least able to pay. That is not just a social concern; it’s a systems concern. An ID that misses the margins cannot serve as a universal credential.
NIRA’s measured rollout to date—and its acknowledgement of crowd management needs—suggest a willingness to adapt. Publishing the fee plan, broadening outreach, and reinforcing privacy rules would turn this deadline from a scramble into a bridge.
The question at the heart of it
Every country that builds a national ID system is really answering a question about trust. Do citizens trust the state to hold their data responsibly? Does the state trust its own citizens enough to design a system that doesn’t punish those who start with less? The answers will be written not just in code and cards, but in the way lines form and how quickly they move.
Somalia now has a year to make its case—through clarity, care, and follow-through. The queues outside NIRA offices are not just lines; they’re a vote of confidence that, this time, the paperwork might finally work for the people.
By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
