The World Bank has stated that it will begin the registration of Nigerians for national digital Identity Cards, (IDs) for Nigerians
The Bank’s Country Director for Nigeria, Shubham Chaudhuri, disclosed this at a dinner with the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy in Abuja on Friday, in Abuja.
According to Chaudhuri, the Bank plans to partner with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to ensure the successful registration and rollout of digital national IDs for all Nigerians. Chaudhuri said the bank will work with NIMC to ensure the registration rollout so that the over 200 million Nigerians will have a national digital ID, starting with people of working age and targeting at least 148 million people by mid-2023.
VoL reports that Chaudhuri revealed the organizations commitment to ending poverty, improving lives, and creating job opportunities for the countrys young population.
The World Bank Country Director stated the essence of leveraging technology to boost transformation and revealed two critical areas of collaboration with Nigeria to achieve the goals.
According to him, the mission of the World Bank in Nigeria is to end poverty, make lives better, and create jobs for all Nigerian youth. He said one of the areas of collaboration is the provision of digital technologies as a transformation tool, beginning with the provision of the digital national ID.
Also, he said, the bank wants to help Nigeria to lead a broadband infrastructure connectivity to enable and bridge the digital divide. He further said the bank will work with states to reduce the right-of-way fees for fibre-optic cables.
The Communications and Digital Economy minister, Bosun Tijani, said the Nigerian government could access about half a billion dollars to begin a local funding programme.
He added that by domestic funding, the government wants to promote the growth and development of home-grown enterprises, eventually contributing to the countrys economic progress.
Tijani assured Nigerians that the half a billion dollars announced for local financing is the beginning, stressing that more investors be on-boarded to increase funds available to support Nigerian entrepreneurs.
