Kenyans to Have Digital IDs by December as President Ruto Orders Revival of Huduma Namba

President Ruto has announced plans to revive the Huduma Namba program by December this year.

On Friday, Ruto said he has directed ICT Cabinet Secretary Eliud Owalo to work on creating digital identity cards for Kenyans within the next 11 months.

“The Huduma-thing that never was must be a success. It’s not the work of the government to issue identification numbers, it is the work of the government to identify the citizens,” Ruto said.

Ruto, who spoke during the Data Privacy Conference at KICC, said the digital ID is part of his administration’s plan to digitize over 5,000 services.

“In the next six months, 5000 government services will be online. Initially, they were 200 services online. I want to ask the ICT CS to work on Digital Identity. So the initially dysfunctional Huduma thing will be revived,” he added.

The president further indicated that over 100,000 kilometers of fiber optic network will be constructed over the next five years to achieve universal broadband connectivity in Kenya.

“Over the next five years we shall construct another one hundred thousand kilometers of national fiber optic network to achieve universal broadband connectivity in the country,” said Ruto.

The Huduma Namba program, also known as the National Integrated Identity Management System (NIIMS), was rolled out under former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration in 2019.

It aimed to create and manage a central master population database, that would be the authentic ‘single source of truth’ on a person’s identity. 

The database would contain information of all Kenyan citizens and foreign nationals residing in Kenya. 

In October 2021, the High Court declared the Huduma Namba rollout illegal on grounds of being in conflict with the Data Protection Act, 2019.

Section 31 of the Data Protection Act requires data processing to be preceded by a data protection impact assessment to assess any data processing risks so that they can be mitigated. 

Justice Jairus Ngaah ruled that the assessment was not done before rolling out the Huduma Namba cards.

By October 2021, over 11.2 million Huduma cards had been processed, according to former government Spokesperson Col. (Rtd) Cyrus Oguna.