By Eferhire Ugbotu
If you spend enough time in technology circles, you will hear every possible opinion about blockchain. Some believe it will reshape the digital economy, while others see it as a technology still searching for practical value. In Africa, one of its strongest use cases may be far more grounded: decentralized identity.
For years, Africa’s digital identity challenge has focused on registration, but the bigger question is now what happens after an identity has been issued. Can a citizen use it easily across banks, hospitals, employers, universities, government services and African borders?
That is where the next identity gap is emerging.
World Bank research across 36 Sub-Saharan African economies found that 78 percent of eligible people over 15 had a government-issued ID, while billions globally still lack the digital identity needed to transact securely online. Africa is therefore dealing with two problems at once: people who remain outside formal identification and people whose identity still does not move easily through the digital economy.
Governments have made progress. Nigeria has the National Identification Number, Ghana has the Ghana Card, Kenya has pursued national digital identity programmes, while Rwanda and South Africa continue to expand digital public services. Yet many of these systems still operate separately, forcing citizens to repeat similar verification processes across banks, telecom companies, employers and government agencies.
A citizen can prove who they are to one institution today and still be asked for almost the same information tomorrow. A professional can carry a physical certificate across a border but leave its digital trust behind.
This is where decentralized identity deserves more attention.
Instead of every organisation storing its own full copy of a person’s identity, trusted bodies can issue digital credentials that individuals hold and present when needed. A university could issue proof of a qualification, a professional body could issue evidence of registration, while a financial provider could confirm that required identity checks have been completed. Other authorised organisations could then verify those credentials without starting the process again.
Blockchain can support this trust layer, but it should not become the story itself. Personal data does not need to sit permanently on public blockchains. The stronger model keeps sensitive information protected while allowing credentials to be checked for authenticity.
The objective is simple: allow trust to move.
Financial services offer one of the clearest starting points. Banks and fintech companies repeatedly verify customers because regulation requires them to know who they are dealing with. Reusable credentials could reduce some of that repetition without weakening regulatory checks.
The same principle applies to education, employment and healthcare. A graduate should be able to prove a qualification without waiting for manual confirmation. A clinician should be able to present verifiable professional registration. A worker moving between African markets should not have to rebuild a professional identity each time they cross a border.
The African Continental Free Trade Area makes this even more important. Africa is seeking deeper movement of services, businesses and professionals, but digital trade depends on digital trust. A connected African market becomes harder to build if identity effectively starts again at every border.
The answer is not one enormous African identity database. The stronger direction is interoperability, where national systems retain their authority while trusted credentials can be recognised across approved systems and markets.
That will require African policymakers and technology leaders to focus less on individual blockchain projects and more on common standards. Countries need clear rules on who can issue credentials, how those credentials are verified, how they are revoked and how citizens recover access when devices are lost.
Access also matters. If the next generation of digital identity works only for people with expensive smartphones and constant internet access, Africa will simply move the identity gap from paper to technology.
The sector therefore needs to move beyond debating whether blockchain itself is good or bad. The more useful question is whether Africa can build a trusted identity layer that connects the systems it already has.
My view is that Africa’s next digital identity challenge is no longer simply registration. It is portability. People should not have to surrender the same information repeatedly because institutions cannot trust one another’s verification.
Africa has an opportunity to build around open standards, protect personal information and design for cross-border recognition from the start. If that happens, decentralized identity could become far more than another blockchain use case. It could become the trust layer connecting Africa’s banks, businesses, public services and people.
That is the digital identity gap Africa should now be trying to close.
About the Author
Eferhire Ugbotu is a Nigerian data professional whose work spans healthcare analytics, financial modelling and secure digital systems. His research interests include intrusion detection, data science, decentralized infrastructure and digital identity across emerging markets. He holds a degree in Computer Science from Nigeria and a master’s degree in data science from the United Kingdom.