Secure Identity Alliance (SIA), the global identity and secure digital services advisory body, has announced that Nigeria NIMC is pioneering Africa-first Mobile Identity Ecosystem leveraging OSIA open standard interfaces to verify unique identities against National Identity Registry.
A digital public good supported by a growing community of 35+ members of industry and government organizations, the OSIA initiative is building a global interoperability framework that features open standard interfaces (APIs) to connect all key building blocks of the identity management ecosystem.
In short, OSIA open standard interfaces ensure governments are able to select the building blocks they need from the suppliers they choose, and to easily connect these to build their national identity ecosystem.
As a result, OSIA eliminates proprietary barriers, breaks down information silos, drives innovation and maximizes investment in existing digital infrastructures.
Developed by CommonIdentity, an African software company part of the OSIA Initiative, the Nigeria NIMC Mobile ID Ecosystem allows the citizen to have his/her Unique ID be verified against the National Identity Registry near-instantly and securely via an OSIA interface.
Launched in December 2020, the App has been downloaded 3,3 million times in 90 days. The daily rate is now 180 000.
Philippe Barreau, Chairman of the Board, Security Identity Alliance, said: “The OSIA initiative represents a new era of openness and collaboration between industry and governments across the world to resolve the interoperability and data-sharing challenges.
“The Nigeria NIMC pioneering Africa-first Mobile ID Ecosystem implementation proves once again that OSIA has successfully moved from the drawing board to the real world.”
Debora Comparin, Chair of the OSIA Workgroup, added, “Harnessing the power of APIs, OSIA is an efficient and cost-effective way of leveraging industry expertise while pushing continuous innovation and remaining confident that there will be no need to discard existing legacy ID investments.”
OSIA unleashes market innovation, facilitates the implementation of multi-vendor programs and enables identity as a service.
The OSIA functional and technical specifications are freely available on the GitHub collaboration platform: https://github.com/SecureIdentityAlliance/osia
