How FlexID is using Algorand to tackle a $50B problem across Africa

Identification, banking, insurance and healthcare are all services that most people in the West often take for granted. Access to these has been over time immaculately woven into society such that, like running tap water, most people simply don’t think about the complexity and importance of something they see as a utility.

However, many developing countries, especially in Africa, lack official and secure identity records which prevents national access to crucial services such as healthcare, banking and insurance. According to the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, ‘Only just over half of the continent’s (Africa) population live in a country where a census took place between 2009 and 2018’, and ‘Only eight African countries have a birth registration system that covers 90% or more of the population’. This means there are a whopping 400 million Africans lacking reliable identification and over 600 million left unbanked.

In 2016, Victor Mapunga from Zimbabwe, and Haardik from India met at Yale University where they attended the Yale Young Global Scholars program in Technology, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship. As chance would have it, they met again the following year at King’s College London where they were immersed in a myriad of technical programs at the European Summer Program on Rationality, where a strong…