Ghana Leads In Digital ID Cards As EU Announces 108m Funding For Digital Programmes

The European Union (EU) has issued a new call for funding within the Digital Europe Programme (DIGITAL), allocating over 108 million euros to projects designed to increase the continent’s tech capacities including digital identity.

The EU has already issued a 2030 deadline to EU member States to issue digital national identity cards to citizens.

Among the targets that will receive funding are Digital Decade Multi-Country Projects which cover the digitalization of public services.

This includes the deployment of the European Union Digital Identity (EUDI) wallet in cross-border use cases and implementing the eIDAS Regulation which mandates that EU member states provide an interoperable electronic identification (eID).

The European Commission plans to allocate 25 million euros for Multi-Country Projects (MCPs) within digital while the deadline for the calls is November 21, 2024.

The selected projects should achieve scale, involve several EU member States and have a long-term perspective, according to the funding call.

“These large-scale projects are designed to help the EU reach the digital targets and objectives as laid out by the Digital Decade Policy Programme”, the call says.

“They aim to help build crucial EU capacities through deployments that no single Member State could achieve alone.”

The Digital Europe Programme has a budget of 7.5 billion euros over 7 years and targets small and medium-sized businesses in particular.

Among its key areas are data infrastructure, 5G communication, public administration, blockchain, digital innovation hubs and more.

The investments aim to realize the “Europe’s Digital Decade” policy plan which outlines targets for digital transformation through multi-country and large-scale projects until 2030.

The European Commission has published a second assessment of these projects as part of the 2024 State of the Digital Decade report.

According to its statistics, by May 2024, only Ireland, Greece, Hungary and Finland had not pre-notified at least one national eID means according to the eIDAS Regulation.

The move by the EU, with a 2030 deadline to its members to issue biometric digital identity cards, brings to the fore Ghana's significant progress in this area, having already achieved this.

Ghana has already issued nearly 19 million national identity cards (Ghana Card) to its adult population and a new initiative ensures that all babies are issued with Ghana Card numbers at birth before receiving their Ghana Cards after their full biometrics are formed.

As the EU plans to digitize public services in its digitalization programme, Ghana has already taken the lead in this area also following the successful digitalization of a number of public offices including DVLA, the ports, registrar general, filing of taxes, passport application, NHIS registration and renewal among others.