WASHINGTON, September 30, 2020 – The World Bank approved on September 29th, 2020 a $140 million credit from the International Development Association (IDA) Scale Up Facility and a $3 million grant from the Global Financing Facility to strengthen the country’s Identity Management system, streamline and digitize key services, and improve the government’s capacity to deliver services in selected sectors, such as health.
The project will focus on creating an effective and secure Identity Management system, notably by modernizing the interoperable civil registry and national identity databases. As part of this effort, the project will implement the National Civil Registration and Identification Center, simplified registration and ID management procedures, a unique identifier number from birth, and improved security of data. This will provide the necessary infrastructure and processes to authenticate data across government services, enabling easier and faster use of data for the provision of services. It will also facilitate the regular reporting of vital events for demographic and vital statistics purposes and strengthen the role of the health sector to contribute to timely registration of vital events.
“This operation is part of a broader set of country program adjustments prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. During this unprecedented time, investing in digital transformation is not only the right investment but also a smart one, and we salute the government’s determination to move swiftly on this”, declared Marie-Chantal Uwanyiligira, Country Manager for Madagascar. “Streamlining and digitalizing services and improving the identification of citizens can help provide quicker and more efficient services to the population and the private sector and play a critical role to mitigate the effects of future health crisis as well as adapting to climate change.”
The project will also help improve the government’s capacity to streamline and digitalize key services for citizens and businesses, including those that rely on civil registry and national identity databases. By building the Government’s infrastructure and capacity to deliver public services through digital or multimodal means, the government will increase the coverage and the quality of public services.
“Digitalization of services can help enhance public sector performance, accountability and transparency, while reducing leakages through automation”, added Heriniaina Andrianasy, co-TTL of the project.
The project will also contribute to increasing resilience to climate change by reducing the vulnerability of the digital systems and public services to natural disasters by featuring robust business continuity protocols for service interruptions that may result from climate-induced events. Infrastructure, including the cloud, can be leveraged to protect critical data, records, and electronic service delivery channels in the case of natural disasters or climate-related extreme events.
There are significant opportunities for digital transformation in Madagascar. The country has a strong supply of software development talent, with around 500-600 skilled software engineers graduating per year, and a dynamic Information Communication and Technology private sector that can be leveraged to provide digital services tailored to the population’s needs. However, while Madagascar is often commended as having one of the fastest internet connections in the world, the cost of mobile internet connectivity, at 40 percent of GDP per capita for 1 gigabyte (GB) in 2016, remains prohibitive. Ten percent of the population is using internet and about two-thirds of the population have access to a mobile phone. This provides significant opportunities for multimodal service delivery, which can target people with limited literacy and/or the most basic phones.
The project adopts a results-based financing approach, including the use of Performance Based Conditions and will, thus, be assessed by the share of population that obtains a new identity credential comprising their Unique Identifier Number and the number of users benefiting from services compliant with new service standards.
* The World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA), established in 1960, helps the world’s poorest countries by providing grants and low to zero-interest loans for projects and programs that boost economic growth, reduce poverty, and improve poor people’s lives. IDA is one of the largest sources of assistance for the world’s 76 poorest countries, 39 of which are in Africa. Resources from IDA bring positive change to the 1.6 billion people who live in IDA countries. Since 1960, IDA has supported development work in 113 countries. Annual commitments have averaged about $21 billion over the last three years, with about 61 percent going to Africa.
