I do not want a digital ID normalized. It’ll lead to a world where everywhere you go, you need to identify yourself. And those that don’t will be marginalized and locked out of everyday basic services. There is an entire industry pushing this, and I’ve been seeing a phrase “id/acc”. Like to accelerate identification. It’s the opposite of privacy and anonymization. It’s evil.
It's already normalized in much of the world and has been for decades since Malaysia began the MyKad program in 2001 [0].
For developing countries, digital and biometric IDs make it easier to disburse public services as well as gain a more realistic understanding of demographics.
Digital activism and (somewhat valid) paranoia around privacy is a luxury belief when vast swathes of the population in LDCs are unbanked and relegated to the informal economy.
They also make it easier for nation states to cut off access to public and private services when they don't like what a citizen is doing. It's wasn't normalized by choice - it was forced upon people. I'm sure NGOs and governments love it but that certainly doesn't mean that citizens do, which governments are supposed to serve. The paranoia is very valid. [1]
My in-laws in rural Gia Lai love having a biometric ID as does my extended family in rural Northwest India.
Before there was significant friction when setting up physical IDs and bank and government services simply couldn't scale down to the village level, which would make routine paperwork a multi-day affair.
Being able to do almost all government-related and banking paperwork over the Internet has legimately made it easier for my extended family in both VN and India to become banked, access public welfare without dealing with corrupt local apparatchiks, and accessing capital to think about making MSMEs.
As I mentioned above, this kind of performative activism is a luxury belief.
It's already possible to do government-related and banking paperwork over the Internet without digital identities linked to your biometrics. We do it every day in the United States.
You're also conveniently ignoring the fact that the system in Ethiopia is being used for far more than banking or government services - their website lists obtaining internet access, sim cards, transportation etc... These digital identities are being used to surveil the activity of citizens and lock anyone the government doesn't like out of commerce.
In the US most households have already had records and identities associated with themselves for decades. In most of the developing world, most people didn't even have a drivers license 20 years ago.
> their website lists obtaining internet access, sim cards, transportation etc... These digital identities are being used to surveil the activity of citizens and lock anyone the government doesn't like out of commerce.
So what?
Ethiopia is also a country with active insurgencies and security risks. The benefits of security and stability outweigh the alternative.
Look at China - it's progress in building digital public infrastructure is what helped it expand dramatically in the 2010s [0].
This is the same thing India is doing [1] (who implemented this project in Ethiopia btw), as is Brazil [2], and other Global South members. Even the EU is looking at adopting similar tenets as well [3].
Is expansion all that matters to you? What about human rights and personal sovereignty? Do you think China is a bastion of democracy and freedom? The benefits of security and stability do not outweigh the alternative when authoritarian governments decide to curb stomp the natural rights of people that don't want to comply with their agendas. You sound like an individual who would gladly take the mark of the beast if it was offered to you. Count me out (of this back and forth as well).
I care about expanding public service delivery capacity. In developing countries, the only cheap and efficient manner to do so is via DPI.
The only countries that escaped the middle income trap have either been subsidized by EU development grants, oil exports, or US largess.
For countries where none of those are the option, you need to make do with what you have.
> The benefits of security and stability do not outweigh the alternative when authoritarian governments decide to curb stomp the natural rights of people that don't want to comply with their agendas
When the decision is between luxury beliefs or survival, and in a country like Ethiopia whose developmental indicators are comparable to Afghanistan, the latter will always win.
I wonder why their developmental indicators are so poor? Perhaps it's because of NGOs like the IMF and World Bank and the loans they issue to these nations and the structural adjustments that keep these nations in cycles of poverty. Amazingly it's the same NGOs that are handing out money to implement digital identities. I'm noticing a pattern here...
> IMF and World Bank and the loans they issue to these nations and the structural adjustments that keep these nations in cycles of poverty
IMF led reforms in the 1990s are what allowed PRC, Vietnam, India, and Bangladesh to start breaking out of the cycle of poverty that trapped their then developmental peers like Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Pakistan.
Also, the IMF and WB are not NGOs. Heck, countries like China and India are some of the largest shareholders in both.
> I wonder why their developmental indicators are so poor
Limited institutional capacity because most countries in the world were either in the midst of or recently ended major civil wars or conventional wars in the 1980s-90s.
Which is the situation that led to the conflict in Ukraine in 2013/14 - an IMF loan that was up for renewal with harsh structural adjustments.
The IMF / WB consistently consult with NGOs and allow them to heavily influence their policies. You can point to four success stories of countries accepting IMF loans and recovering. There are 86 to 91 developing countries as of late 2025 that are still indebted to the IMF, especially in Africa.
It's a monetary tool for Western hegemony. Pretending it's anything else is disingenuous.
