SIDI Hub held a workshop on 19 May, prior to ID4Africa, including members of Standards Development
Organizations (SDOs), leaders of African identity systems, ID4Africa Ambassadors, members of the
African Union, international non-governmental organizations, and major funding bodies. The discussion
included the SIDI Hub perspective on the Digital ID landscape, progress and lessons from SIDI Hub, and
opportunities to learn from and support the African Union’s interoperability Framework. Key themes
from the discussion included:
- Standards Development Organizations play a critical role in building bridges within the
international community. - Trust Frameworks are complex policy stacks – and interoperability depends, not on policy
alignment, but upon clear communication and interpretation of policies. - Solutions must be grounded in real use cases, which often depend upon a combination of
credentials, some of which are issued and regulated by government (e.g., national IDs) and some
of which are issued by private entities and might be governed by global rules (e.g., diploma or
bank data). - Complex use cases, rather than simple or low-stakes interactions, stand a better chance of
solving the underlying challenges of cross-border credential usage. - SIDI Hub and the African Union can work more intentionally to learn, share, and build common
tools.
Following the session, SIDI Hub organizers and the participants from national ID systems in Afri
expressed a desire to work more closely together on the SIDI Hub roadmap, which includes Trust
Framework and Network-of-Network architectural analysis in the short term. At the end of the session,
100% of the 22 survey respondents at the Addis Ababa event said that SIDI Hub work should continue to
deliver on the Global Digital Compact.
