Côte d’Ivoire launches feasibility study for digital ID platform

What happened

Côte d'Ivoire has launched a feasibility study for a national digital authentication platform, according to Tech Review Africa. The initiative signals an early-stage move by the West African nation to explore a centralised system for verifying digital identity, a foundational layer for broader e-government and digital-economy ambitions.

Details on the study's scope, timeline, technical partners and funding have not yet been disclosed. As a feasibility exercise, the work is expected to assess the technical, legal and operational requirements for such a platform before any procurement or rollout decision is made.

Why it matters

Digital authentication is the plumbing beneath almost every modern government and commercial service — from tax filing and benefits disbursement to banking, mobile money and healthcare access. A national authentication platform, if built well, would let citizens prove who they are once and reuse that credential across public and private services, reducing friction, fraud and duplication of effort across agencies.

For digital-transformation leaders across the region, the move is a reminder that identity infrastructure is increasingly treated as a prerequisite for digital economy growth, not an afterthought. Countries that get the underlying architecture right — interoperable, privacy-respecting, inclusive of citizens without smartphones or formal documentation — tend to see faster adoption of everything built on top of it, from digital payments to e-health records.

The Renascence take

Feasibility studies rarely make headlines, but they are where the most consequential experience decisions quietly get made — long before a single login screen is designed.

The temptation in any national ID programme is to treat it as a technology procurement exercise, when it is really a trust and behaviour-design exercise. Citizens will only adopt a digital authentication platform if it visibly reduces hassle compared with the status quo — fewer queues, fewer repeated forms, faster access to services they already value. Governments that run this feasibility phase well will map the lived experience of marginalised and low-connectivity users first, not last, and build enrolment journeys around existing trusted touchpoints — banks, telecom agents, local administration offices — rather than assuming citizens will come to a new digital front door unprompted.