Africa’s invisible millions survive without ID documents (SOURCE:Equal Times)

Few people in the Kiambaa area of Kikuyu constituency on the outskirts of Kenya’s capital can dispute Mushewa Ndolo’s talent as a carpenter.

His hard work, and not to mention his handiwork, has endeared him to dozens of loyal clients for whom he has tailor-made furniture.

But the father-of-four, who plies his trade from an abandoned, dilapidated structure at Kiambaa shopping centre alongside other men from his community, is struggling to grow his business. He cannot apply for tenders or other “big jobs” because he doesn’t have a bank account. Nor can he own property or even buy a vehicle – all because he doesn’t own any official ID.

Mushewa is one of nearly 4000 members of the Shona community in Kenya, a stateless group whose forebearers migrated to Kenya from Zimbabwe as missionaries more than 50 years ago, but who are not recognised by the state as Kenyans, and as such, have never been issued with any Kenyan identification papers.

“Life is not easy for us. We cannot own property, register a mobile phone SIM card, operate a bank account or take part in any activity where official identification is required,” Mushewa tells Equal Times, while explaining that he and other members of his community have petitioned the Kenya government about their status, but with no success.

His predicament is shared by Elijah Wangila, an indigenous Kenyan who lives without an ID card and has never applied for the mandatory document, even though it is issued free of charge to those deemed citizens.

Wangila says that he doesn’t have an ID card because he missed the opportunity to apply for one when he turned 18. Applying now, years later as a father of five would, arouse suspicions, he claims, as well as being a tedious nightmare of bureaucracy. As a result, he is forced into an ‘identityless’ life of casual work and irregularity.

“The government treats people over the age of 25 without IDs with suspicion,” he offers. “They think that such people refused to seek ID cards because they want to engage in crime.”

Luckily, Wangila’s wife has an ID card and so she has been able to apply for their children’s birth certificates, saving them from the same difficulties of living life without official identification as their father.

1.1 billion without ID

There are an estimated 1.1 billion people worldwide who cannot officially prove their identity, according to the World Bank. Just under half of those people – approximately 500 million – are estimated to live in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the World Economic Forum, and by going about their daily business without proof of identity, these ‘identityless’ millions are missing out on basic legal, social and economic rights and opportunities.

Of the 1.1 billion people without ID, four out of ten are young people below the age of 18, while one out of six are infants below the age of five.

And there is a gender dimension to the problem, too. In at least 62 countries, according to United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) data cited in a 2017 GSMA report on the identity gender gap, girls are less likely than boys to be registered at birth, while the highest gender gap in birth registration is found in Somalia where 97 per cent of children are unregistered and girls are 18 per cent more likely to be unregistered than boys.

As adults, gender and income level have a significant impact on whether a person has identity documents. In Uganda for example, a 2014 study cited by GSMA showed that only 63 per cent of women have any form of ID compared to 83 per cent of men. And in many countries women still face legal and institutional barriers to obtaining formal identity documents. For example, in countries like Algeria, Benin and Mauritius, married women are required to produce a marriage certificate when applying for a national identity card. Married men do not.

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