Maisha Namba — Kenya's Biometric National ID Clears a 600,000-Card Backlog While Fighting Data-Protection Lawsuits

Maisha Namba is Kenya's rebuilt national digital identity system, replacing the abandoned Huduma Namba/NIIMS programme with a lifelong unique number that links birth records, biometric data (fingerprints and photograph) and a single Maisha Card consolidating national ID, passport and other credentials into one register run by the State Department for Immigration and Citizen Services.

In 2024 the National Registration Bureau printed 1.7 million ID cards and cleared more than 600,000 backlogged applications, lifting daily production capacity from around 8,000 cards to a planned 25,000–30,000 a day as it works toward a 32-million-card target by end-2026, with cards typically processed and printed within 10 days.

The rollout has proceeded under sustained legal challenge. In December 2023, Justice John Chigiti halted issuance after the Katiba Institute showed the government had not completed a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) required under the 2019 Data Protection Act — a near-repeat of the 2020 ruling that stopped the original NIIMS scheme. The injunction was lifted in August 2024 by Justice Lawrence Mugambi, allowing card printing to resume, but petitioners have told the court that data-sharing arrangements covering some 450 entities have still not been disclosed, and the constitutional questions remain before the courts.

Maisha Namba is therefore best read as a live, contested case: real operational scale (millions of cards issued) achieved in parallel with an unresolved fight over whether citizens' biometric data is being governed and shared lawfully.

Read the full analysis: https://kenyalaw.org/caselaw/cases/view/281592/