Bill Gates and the UN impose their digital IDs on Sierra Leoneans

Bill Gates and the UN impose their digital IDs on Sierra Leoneans

Rhoda Wilson

The West African nation of Sierra Leone is at full throttle with its digital transformation efforts, and its MOSIP-based foundational identity system is the nucleus of this project.

The Modular Open Source Identity Platform (“MOSIP”) is a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation initiative that provides a platform on which all countries can build their own digital ID system “for free.”

On Friday, an article ‘Sierra Leone putting digital ID at the centre of its digital transformation agenda’, published by Biometric Update, reported on an interview with Sierra Leone’s National Civil Registration Authority (“NCRA”) Deputy Director Moses T.F. Vibbie.  The interview was conducted on the sidelines of a MOSIP Connect event last month in Addis Ababa.

Vibbie explained that the strong political will of the country’s President, Julius Maada Bio, and the dedication of the NCRA’s Director General, Mohamed Mubashir Massaquoi, are the other driving forces behind the initiative. Massaquoi is also an ambassador for ID4Africa whose foundation partners are the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Network.

“Foundational digital ID managed by the NCRA is at the centre of Sierra Leone’s digital transformation agenda. The National ID Card or NIN is mandatory for accessing services in Sierra Leone as enshrined in the National Civil Registration Act of 2016 (NCR Act 2016),” Vibbie said.

So far, he said, digital ID has been instrumental in the country’s ongoing government efforts as almost all government services have been digitised and linked to the digital ID.

“According to the parliament of Sierra Leone’s ratification and directives, the NIN is linked to all government and key private sector services including SIM card registration, education, government payroll, employment in public and private sectors, insurance, financial inclusion and services, vehicle registration and driver’s license, health care, pension and social security, properties and land registration and more,” he outlined. It is required for passports, work and residence permits.

Using Bill Gates’ Digital ID Platform

In 2023, the country signed a Memorandum of Understanding (“MoU”) for a national digital ID pilot built with MOSIP. The aim of this, it is said, is to establish an ID system that will respond to the specific needs of the country and enable citizens to have access to several important public and even private sector services.

Biometric Update noted that MOSIP had also recently signed an MoU with Burkina Faso and surpassed 76 million registrations across 9 jurisdictions.

MOSIP is a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation initiative that offers a “formidable solution” for digital ID for the 850 million people worldwide “who lack any acceptable form of legal identity.”  The Foundation, which is known to profiteer off the poor to enrich itself, offers its digital ID “solution” to countries “for free.”

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