Identity and Migration — research update #1: Digital ID in Kenya
(Authors: Keren Weitzberg, Nora Naji, and Emrys Schoemaker)
In this post, we share an updates from our ongoing research project in Kenya, outlining emerging Digital Identity initiatives and the implications of recent protests.
The Shirika Plan
Last year, the Kenyan government announced the “Shirika Plan” — an initiative promising to transform the country’s refugee camps, Dadaab and Kakuma, into integrated settlements, in line with the UN’s Global Compact on Refugees (Shirika means ‘coming together’ in Swahili). This plan seeks to better integrate Kenya’s approximately 600,000 refugees and asylum seekers into the economy and various national systems. On the surface, it represents a positive policy shift for a government that has often been hostile to refugees. In the past, the Kenyan state has threatened to close the Dadaab Refugee Complex, periodically suspended refugee registration, and even deported Somali refugees in contravention of international law. Yet, as refugee rights advocates like Victor Nyamori of Amnesty International (interviewed here for The New Humanitarian) have suggested, this new plan may be hype, aimed at courting international donors, rather than meaningful policy change.
Why does this matter for those who follow digital identity developments?
Integrating migrants and refugees into national registration systems can have far-reaching effects — from ‘normalizing’ often discriminated groups to problematizing legal status. As Immigration and Citizenship Services Principal Secretary Julius Bitok explained during a roundtable at this year’s ID4Africa AGM in Cape Town, the Shirka Plan will also entail the incorporation of refugees into Kenya’s newly launched (and controversial) digital identity project known as Maisha Namba (Life Number). According to Bitok, refugees will receive Maisha cards and Maisha Nambas (unique identity numbers) alongside Kenyan citizens and residents. But what additional rights and services, if any, this will afford them is less than clear.
Time will tell how meaningful such developments are for the hundreds of thousands of refugees and asylum seekers living in Kenya, many of whom have been in the country for well over two decades. We will be following this issue closely as part of our empirical research in the country.
Gen Z Protests and IDs
Another key development is the Gen Z protests in Kenya. In June 2024, after the Kenyan Parliament passed a new and controversial finance bill, Kenya erupted in nation-wide anti-government protests driven primarily by Gen Z (those currently between the ages of 12 and 27). They protested against unemployment, economic equality, and corruption, soon being joined by larger segments of the population. Kenya’s government responded to the protests with brutal measures, including abductions and extrajudicial killings.
Despite the waning of protests over the last weeks, pressure on the Kenyan government remains high. In July, activists published an Action Plan to monitor the Ruto government’s efforts to reform key areas affecting young people, which was widely circulated on social media.
Notably, one of the action points in the document concerns the growing costs of identification. The Action Plan calls on the government to “ban the request of government issued documents for job seekers except for a national identification card; drop the replacement ID fee from KES. 1,000 fee to KES. 200; lower the drivers’ license renewal fee by 25% and make all licenses renewable every three years”.
In Kenya, where youth unemployment is at a record high, young job seekers are increasingly frustrated with needing to provide extraneous documents, such as certificates of good conduct from the police or tax compliance certificates from the Kenya Revenue Authority, each with a requisite fee. Such demands are especially problematic for certain ethnic and religious groups in Kenya, particularly Muslims, who have faced historic discrimination in access to IDs and legal documents. As this article explains, these various “certificates will cost a jobless Kenyan upwards of Sh5,000.” Add to that the new charges for national IDs. Last year, the government announced that ID cards, which were previously free, would cost new applicants 1,000 Kenyan shillings (roughly $6; £5) while the cost of replacing an ID would be increased 20-fold to 2,000 shillings, sparking widespread protests online. The price hikes were eventually blocked by the Kenya High Court. The government u-turned, lowering the costs for new IDs to KSh 300 and the fee for a replacement to KSh 1,000–still a marked rise over previous years.
The government may be trying to extract money from Kenya’s population and pay for its costly new digital identity project (Maisha Namba) by hiking fees. But amidst a cost-of-living crisis, these increased costs are not going down well with Kenya’s youth.
This controversy also reveals a key source of exclusion in Kenya and elsewhere: prohibitively high fees for mandatory government ID documents. As one Kenyan X user commented: “This fee undermines the constitutional right to identification, a fundamental necessity for all Kenyans.”
