Abstract
There are 1 billion individuals in the world who due to a lack legal identification (ID)
documents find it difficult to prove their identities, and 400 million reside in Africa. This
lack of legal identification creates hurdles for people, such as difficulties in accessing
financial services, mobile telecommunications services, obtaining citizenship
documents, accessing government social services, and political participation amongst
others. This problem is exacerbated among residents of marginalized urban
communities such as slums, where people already live on the edges of society without
the benefit of adequate provision of essential government services such as sanitation,
clinics, and decent housing. In response to this gap in the provision of legal identity,
many governments, international organizations and companies across the world have
begun implementing national identification programs which typically come in form of
state-sponsored digital identity programs. Using the theoretical and conceptual lenses
of critical data studies and data justice, this thesis uses semi-structured interviews to
unearth the real impact of Nigeria’s digital identity program in Ajegunle slum, one of
Nigeria’s largest slum communities. Some of the major findings are that strong
coercion was used to get people enrolled into the national identity program, there were
significant economic barriers to enrolling by an economically-disadvantaged slum
population, and that prior government failures in the provision of services spawned
conspiracy theories about the real intentions for the identity program.