By Andrew Magombo
Lilongwe, July 13: Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA) Director General, Daud Suleman has called on Government entities and key stakeholders in the private sector to increase demand for digital service provision by utilizing the National Registration Bureau (NRB) as the trusted source of identities in an established digital economy.
Suleman made the remarks on Thursday at the Bingu International Convention Centre (BICC) in Lilongwe during a project validation workshop with key stakeholders on Inclusive Digital Transformational for Malawi (IDT4M) highlighting the essence of keeping up with what African countries are doing in digitalization.
“There is a strong need to move towards a digital economy where people are presented as digital entities that must be securely identified and able to commit transactions, create value, services and goods to others.
“In the digital space, we look at holding digital identities which come about when people are conducting transactions, at the core a person that has to be identified by one source and here we only have a single source of truth which is NRB,” he said.
Suleman added that putting NRB at the centre of the digital economy will put an end to chaos of multiple identities which affects provision of service citing Affordable Inputs Programme (AIP), road traffic system and immigration, among other services, where cases of duplication are common.
He said: “We have potential from e-government and NRB to manage digital identities, a doctor in Karonga should be able to verify who I am just by punching in my phone number or banks giving access to customers using their finger prints.”
UNDP Deputy Representative, Challa Getachew said a digital ecosystem addresses diverse challenges through digital platforms hence their interest in continued support for NRB towards inclusive digital transformation for Malawi.
“UNDP was a partner which engaged with NRB to initiate the National Identity Registration System and to date over 11 million Malawians have national identity cards. As it stands, Malawi is on track to be one of the few countries to fully register both adults and children with the birth certificate registration,” he said.
Principal Secretary for NRB in the Ministry of Homeland Security, Mphatso Sambo said digitalization is an enabler for digitalized economy of Malawi hence the agency has become innovative in digital systems integration.
“Moving forward people should be able to conduct transactions without queuing for Know Your Customer, a finger print should be enough just like a mobile phone wallet when conducting mobile money transactions,” he said.
Also at in attendance at the workshop was Malawi Electoral Commission Chairperson, Justice Chifundo Kachale who conceded the need for MEC in digital transformation at the root of a Malawian democratic society.
