Seamfix Urges Africa to Build Trusted Identity Infrastructure

Seamfix Limited has called for stronger collaboration among African governments, regulators and businesses to develop trusted and interoperable identity systems capable of giving millions of people secure access to essential services and the digital economy.

The pan-African digital identity and trust infrastructure company made the call as Nigeria marked the 2026 National Day of Identity, organised by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) on September 16.

The 8th National Day of Identity, held under the theme, “My Identity, My Shadow,” focused attention on the importance of ensuring that individuals have identities that can be securely recognised whenever they need to access services.

Seamfix said identity had become fundamental to everyday economic and social activities, ranging from opening bank accounts and accessing healthcare to registering mobile telephone lines, receiving social intervention programmes and using government services.

The company, however, said the identity gap remained significant across Africa, with more than 500 million people still lacking access to a recognised identity, based on World Bank estimates.

It argued that the challenge went beyond the mere absence of identity documents, stressing that people also needed identity infrastructure that could allow verified information to be securely and reliably used across different institutions.

According to Seamfix, fragmented databases, inconsistent records, inadequate interoperability and repeated verification processes continue to affect identity management across several African markets.

The company said such weaknesses could increase the cost of onboarding customers for businesses, delay access to essential services and force individuals to repeatedly prove their identities to different institutions.

It added that people in remote and underserved communities often faced an even greater challenge because of limited access to enrolment facilities and identity-linked services.

Group Chief Executive Officer of Seamfix, Chimezie Emewulu, said the company’s experience of nearly two decades in the identity sector had demonstrated the importance of building systems that citizens and institutions could trust.

“Nearly two decades of building identity infrastructure across Africa has taught us what happens when identity works, and what it costs when it doesn’t,” Emewulu said.

He said Africa’s economic prosperity would depend partly on the ability of its citizens to participate fully in both the formal economy and wider society.

“Africa’s prosperity depends on people being able to participate fully in the economy and society, which is why we believe identity should be a right, not a privilege, and why we will keep building the systems that make that right real,” he said.

Emewulu also stressed the need for collaboration between the public and private sectors, saying governments could not address the continent’s identity challenges in isolation.

“That work doesn’t stop with governments, it means partnering with every institution willing to put trust and access first,” he added.

Seamfix said it had spent 19 years developing identity and digital trust infrastructure across Africa and had worked with NIMC as one of its trusted infrastructure partners.

Through its work with the commission, the company said more than 130 million Nigerians had been enrolled in the National Identity database.

It also said its identity-related projects across Africa had resulted in more than 350 million identities being processed.

Beyond Nigeria, the company said it had supported the digitisation of passport renewal in the Republic of Benin and provided solutions covering SIM registration compliance, identity verification and digital registries for governments and businesses.

Speaking at the National Day of Identity event, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director of Seamfix, Frank Atube, said the problem of fragmented identity infrastructure should be understood in terms of the ability of different systems to trust and use information already verified elsewhere.

“Fragmentation isn’t about how many times someone has to verify who they are, it’s about whether the systems doing that verifying can trust each other,” Atube said.

He explained that where identity systems were unable to communicate effectively, people could be required to start the verification process afresh even when their identities had already been established by another institution.

“For those inside the system, it means starting over every time because those systems don’t talk to each other, instead of trusting what’s already been confirmed,” he said.

Atube said the problem was more severe for people who were completely outside formal identity systems.

“For millions of others, it means no recognised identity at all,” he added.

He said effective identity infrastructure should therefore achieve three key objectives: accurately verify individuals, protect their personal data and extend identity services to communities that remain underserved.

“That is the real priority, not just connecting what already exists, but building access for everyone else,” Atube said.

Seamfix further stressed that the expansion and interconnection of digital identity systems must be accompanied by strong privacy and data protection measures.

The company said individuals should know how their personal information was being collected, shared and protected, while appropriate safeguards should be put in place to ensure that data was not used beyond legitimate purposes.

It called for closer cooperation between government agencies, regulators and private-sector organisations to improve interoperability, strengthen data protection and expand identity-enabled services to underserved populations.

The company said National ID Day offered an opportunity to acknowledge Nigeria’s progress in identity management while renewing the commitment to developing systems that remained accessible and reliable throughout an individual’s lifetime.

Seamfix said its objective was to contribute to an identity ecosystem in which people could securely establish who they were and use that identity to access services without unnecessary duplication of verification processes.

The company operates in several African markets, including Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, the Republic of Benin and Kenya.

Its portfolio includes BioSmartX, Fixiam, ePass and FixID. It also developed the ePass digital passport platform for the Republic of Benin’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, alongside other identity and digital transformation projects considered critical to public and private-sector service delivery.