Digital Identity Verification System Challenge

Over 500 million Africans lack formal identity documents, excluding them from essential services, financial systems, and economic opportunities, while governments lose billions to identity fraud in social programs, voter registration, and service delivery. Current biometric systems require expensive infrastructure, constant connectivity, and expose citizens to privacy risks through centralized databases that become targets for hackers. Manual verification processes create corruption opportunities, exclude illiterate populations, and fail to prevent duplicate registrations. Developers must create offline-capable biometric systems that verify identity without exposing personal data, work on basic smartphones, prevent fraud through liveness detection, and enable millions to access government services and financial inclusion while protecting privacy and human dignity.

The Digital Identity Verification System Challenge calls for innovative biometric authentication solutions that enable secure, privacy-preserving identity verification for millions of Africans accessing government services and financial systems. This challenge addresses the critical need for reliable identity infrastructure that works offline, protects privacy, and prevents fraud while being accessible to all citizens.

Participants will develop biometric authentication systems that combine multiple modalities (face, fingerprint, voice) to provide robust identity verification for government services, banking, healthcare, and social programs. The system must work entirely offline after initial enrollment, protect user privacy through advanced encryption and local processing, and prevent spoofing attacks while remaining accessible to elderly and disabled users.

Successful solutions will implement liveness detection to prevent fraud, handle aging and environmental effects on biometrics, work on low-cost devices including feature phones with attachments, and provide cryptographic proofs of identity without exposing biometric data. The system should support decentralized verification, enable selective disclosure of attributes, and maintain audit trails for compliance.

We particularly value solutions that address the unique challenges of African contexts: working without consistent internet, handling worn fingerprints from manual labor, accommodating cultural sensitivities around biometric capture, and enabling financial inclusion for the unbanked. The platform should help governments reduce identity fraud, enable efficient service delivery, and provide citizens with portable, secure digital identities.