As the CEO of a biometrics company for just over two years now, and a technologist for life, I have watched with fascination the growing penetration of biometrics into the African market.

It is truly a phenomenon to watch how third world counties can leapfrog first world ones through the adoption of emerging technologies at a rapid rate. This growth is driven by the fact that there is no legacy system or investment to replace, thereby removing the natural reluctance of business and government to write off undepreciated and paid for infrastructure.

It is just such an occurrence that has driven the gradual shift on this continent towards biometrics, with the next few years promising exponential growth in the adoption of these technologies in Africa.

Africa & Populations – A brief history

Whilst Europe and the USA battle privacy laws and other such niceties, Africa sees in biometrics a way to bring definitive identification to a continent where illiteracy is rampant, and many people do not know when they were born, nor have any record of the event available to them.
With limited resources, African countries have struggled to identify and even count their populations, with the constant movement and migration of populations, not to mention the regular, often violent changes in government, causing havoc amongst what little records exist.

A census in Africa is not the organised, mathematically correct and defensible event that European and American citizens take for granted. Rounding errors and estimations can add or remove millions from the tally, leaving countries with a population that could vary in reality from the final number by as much as 20% or more.

Alien residents in countries number in the millions, as individuals move to find family and tribe members across border lines demarcated by conquerors decades ago, and which have no bearing on where tribes lived or roamed in the past.

In addition to this, war, famine and the desire for a better life drive millions from their place of birth each year, into cities and even countries who have no idea who they are, or where they came from.

Biometrics – The cure for all

Africa is not for sissies they say. It’s a tough continent, where the weather, the people and fate seem to take no mercy, and filing cabinets are in short supply. When you live in a mud hut in a rural village with no telephones or internet or connectivity, your birth is seldom marked by anything other than the phase of the moon or the season, tied back to the year of the great flood, or big fire. These types of markers do not make for an accurate national identity system.

In the past few years, and in line with the adoption of technologies mentioned earlier in this article, the emergence of the mobile phone, and the rampant growth of these networks, has finally made instant and reliable communication a reality in Africa.
The past two decades have been the Era of Connectivity in Africa, with the coming decade showing signs of being the Era of the Individual – making individual people count on a continent that has low value for life.

Biometrics has a key role to play in this renaissance. Throughout Africa, governments are moving towards national identity programs that will allow their populations access to services such as education and healthcare, and which will logically increase the value of life.

Companies such as ours, steeped in the culture of this continent, and understanding the desire and need of our sister countrymen, are building solutions that are customised to this harsh environment, and which take into account the primal needs over the simple niceties of the first world.

In Maslow’s hierarchy, self actualisation is the pinnacle, not the base, and biometrics answer a fundamental need for populations that transcend such issues as privacy laws and inconvenience.

The ability of an individual to be identified by no more than the combination of their name, photograph and fingerprint, all of which are easily portable and do not require documentation, is a panacea for the governments of Africa.

It is my firm belief that the continued growth and rise of this continent from the dark to the light can only be achieved through the individualisation of the inhabitants, and that given the challenges that face us, this can only be achieved through the creation of national identity systems which take into account the lack of erudition of these individuals.

Knowing who you are, and that you matter as an individual, is the first step towards true freedom, and ultimately, self actualisation. Biometric technologies will be at the heart of this revolution, and are already allowing countries to achieve an accurate census of their populations, and to use these numbers to drive informed policy formulation. This in turn will allow effective health and education programme implementations, which will drive investment and natural entrepreneurial growth in the economy.