Digital Maldives – National Digital ID and Connectivity for Climate-Resilient Public Services

Approved by the World Bank's International Development Association in June 2022 with a $10 million grant, the Digital Maldives for Adaptation, Decentralisation and Diversification Project supports the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change and Technology, the Communications Authority of Maldives and the National Centre for Information Technology to expand broadband market competition, strengthen digital identity and build climate-data platforms across the archipelago's roughly 1,200 islands.
The National Centre for Information Technology launched the eFaas national digital ID in 2022, followed by a biometric selfie-verified mobile app in 2023, letting citizens authenticate for government, banking and telecom services online. According to UNDP's 2025 State of Digital in the Maldives assessment, the country has reached near-nationwide 4G coverage, 83.9% internet penetration, and over 85% of the population with access to high-speed fibre — outer islands such as Laamu and Haa Alif atolls now have broadband and 4G quality close to that of the capital, Malé.
Draft digital identity and digital transformation legislation was released for public feedback in June 2025 (branded "Maldives 2.0"), with a fuller integrated digital identity system — enabling remote access to healthcare, social security and banking without inter-island travel — targeted for 2027.
The IFC and Internews both flag that affordability and service quality still lag in the outer atolls, and that the roughly 16% of Maldivians who remained offline in 2024 are disproportionately older residents and those in the most remote islands — meaning connectivity gains have not yet closed the digital-inclusion gap for the hardest-to-reach groups. The programme's core digital-ID rollout is also still mid-implementation, with no independent outcome evaluation published as of mid-2026.

Read the full analysis: https://greaterinternetfreedom.org/blog/mitigating-digital-divide-impact-on-marginalized-groups-in-the-maldives/