WURI-Niger's Iris Biometric Pilot — Testing MOSIP Digital ID Deduplication in Four Communes

The West Africa Unique Identification for Regional Integration and Inclusion (WURI) programme is a World Bank-financed effort to give foundational, government-recognised digital IDs to people across Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, Niger and Togo. Niger joined WURI in 2022 through its Ministry of Interior, Public Security and Territorial Administration, with the long-term goal of issuing national digital IDs to some 22 million people by 2026.

To test whether an open-source biometric identity platform (MOSIP) with iris-scanning hardware can reliably deduplicate identity records before issuing a unique national ID, and to extend birth registration to children who lack a certificate.

Between 2024 and February 2025, WURI-Niger ran a technology pilot using the MOSIP identity platform, with India-based BioEnable supplying IriUniverse-Two dual iris scanners. Iris images feed MOSIP's Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS), which uses matching algorithms to flag and remove duplicate identity records before a unique ID is issued. The pilot enrolled more than 3,000 people across four communes - Tanout, Mayahi, Doutchi and Tagazar. A related initiative launched in the Filingue area in May 2025 targeted birth registration specifically, issuing certificates to 21,202 children under five who lacked one, alongside digitisation of existing paper birth records held by local councils and judicial officers.

Both pilots enrolled a small fraction of the 22-million-person national target: over 3,000 people through the iris-biometric pilot and 21,202 children through the birth-registration initiative. No deduplication accuracy or error rate has been published.

Funding specific to Niger's share of the $273 million IDA financing for WURI's second phase (which also covers Benin, Burkina Faso and Togo) has not been separately disclosed, and enrolment so far is a small fraction of the 22-million-person target - this practice should be read as a documented technology trial, not yet a proven nationwide deployment.