Brian Mayodi
President Ruto announced plans to implement a digital identity in the nation on Friday while speaking at a data protection conference at KICC.
“It is no longer the work of the government to issue IDs but to identify Kenyans,” he said.
The president stated that the service would be accessible before the end of the year.
“I have asked my good friend Eliud to work on it so that big Huduma Namba things that never were, we can finally have a digital identity,”
The digital ID will replace Huduma Number which was introduced in 2019 and never was after it was deemed unlawful by the High Court in October 2021.
Ruto stated that his administration has increased the number of government services available online from 300 to 600 in the last two weeks, noting that there has been significant development in this area.
In the following six months, he claimed, an additional 5,000 services will be made available online.
He stated that in order to attain nationwide broadband access, the government plans to build an additional 100,000 kilometres of national fibre optic infrastructure over the next five years.
He claimed that the goal is to improve the delivery of government services by digitising and, whenever possible, automating crucial procedures online.
“We are developing the digital master plan and establishing a regional force to promote the large-scale development of software for export,” Ruto said.
