Prof. Ken Attafuah, NIA Boss

The National Identification Authority (NIA) has given indication that it will begin the registration of Ghanaians on pilot in seven cities abroad from February 2024.

The exercise, to be done in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration is part of a strategy to broaden the scope of access of the National Identity card to all categories of Ghanaians.

“We are poised together with Identity Management Systems (IMS) and the National Health Insurance Authority to begin the registration of Ghanaians aged 6 to 14 beginning in January 2024.

“We are poised together with the birth and death registry and Ghana Health Service to begin the registration of Ghanaians aged 0 to 6 years in January 2024, all things being equal,” the Executive Secretary of the NIA, Professor Ken Agyemang Attafuah said at the second edition of the made-in-Ghana Summit 2023.

The theme for the event was, “the Role of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) in Sustainable Digital Transformation”.

Prof Attafuah indicated that an opportunity would be created for Ghanaians, who could not register for the card since the commencement of the exercise in 2019 to do so.

Speaking on the theme, he noted that sustainable PPP must address critical issues that included delineation of the role of partners, timely provision of funding commitments, provision of periodic technological updates, adoption of an effective framework agreement for continuous knowledge transfer and the presence of strong political will to support PPP agreement.

He observed that the provision of a stable leadership at the institutional level particularly on the side of the public partner was necessary.

“Between July 2009 and February 2017, the NIA had five chief executives,” he lamented.

Dr Kenneth Ashigbey, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunication, asked industry players to involve academia in the design and implementation of PPP agreements that were geared towards fast tracking the digitalisation agenda for effective outcomes and processes. 

Dignitaries present at the Summit were Mrs Jemima Oware, Registrar of Companies; Prof Kwaku Appiah-Adu, Senior Policy Advisor, Office of the Vice President and Mr Moses Baiden Jnr, Chairman Margins ID Group.