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political situation, with elections coming in 2019 that motivated the incumbent government tosimultaneously register voters, demonstrate tangible development progress, document economicgrowth, and address corruption. While GoM and its development partners comprised the primarydrivers of this project, other groups with an interest in the outcomes included individual citizens andthe private sector.Cost SharingThe total cost of the project came to US 52 million, funded by GoM, DFID, Irish Aid, USAID, thegovernment of Norway, the EU, UNICEF, and UNDP. Initially, a cost-sharing agreement wasconfirmed, with GoM agreeing to contribute 50 percent of the costs and development partnersproviding the balance. GoM later negotiated their monetary contribution down to 40 percent, citingin-kind contributions such as providing security and transportation. 2 With funding in place, the workof developing stakeholder buy-in could begin.StakeholdersThe most important stakeholders in this entire project were the citizens of Malawi, who would receivea legal identity and thereby smooth access to a number of services, benefits, and products that requirethe ability to prove and assert one’s identity. When I took over the project in January 2017, I went outto the public and spoke to common people—shopkeepers, vendors, donut-selling women—andcommunities like faith-based organizations, political parties, media, and other special interest groupsrepresenting citizens. I found an identity quest, subtly wrapped in human rights issues—right to vote,social justice, and gender balance. That was enough to sense the demand for identity.As noted earlier, GoM provided both the political impetus and the legal framework for pushingforward with this project. Credit goes to the team lead by the UN Resident Coordinator withAmbassadors of donor countries to convince the government to move forward urgently. Theincumbent government had an interest in delivering results, while the opposition had severalconcerns. I met with parliament and fielded around 50 questions from the opposition, explaining theproposal and the system to them; this helped to bring them onboard as partners in its implementation.They grilled me hard, especially on use of ID allegedly to rig the elections. This was surprising for me.ID is used worldwide to come up with clean voters lists to underpin “One Person, One Identity, OneVote” and combat electoral fraud. I explained this to the political parties, sharing my experiences inother countries that role of National ID is prior to elections, to come up with transparent electoral roll,displayed for public scrutiny. The outcome of that meeting was fantastic—a national consensus on theimplementation of a National Identity Card aimed at empowerment of the people.From a legislative perspective, the Malawi National Registration Act entered into force in August 2015,requiring all Malawians 16 years of age and older be included in a national registry and be issued anidentity card. The act also created the National Registration Bureau (NRB) to manage both civilregistration and registration for the ID program. Many countries assign civil registration to thepurview of local governments, but the NRB is a federal agency tasked with both responsibilities.2 As of early 2017, the development partners had increased their contributions to a share of around 67 percent inresponse to budgetary concerns from GoM.6MALAWI’S JOURNEY TOWARDS TRANSFORMATION

Demonstrating the revenue-generating possibilities to the NRB helped develop their interest in theproject. I showed them how the system could provide opportunities for developing a sustainablerevenue source by charging small fees for identity authentication at points of service, such as openinga bank account. Case studies from other countries demonstrated proof-of-concept and feasibility,such as India’s Aadhaar platform and my own experience at Pakistan’s National Database andRegistration Authority, which relies on service charges to fund its operations. Other departments—including the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC), Malawi Revenue Agency, Ministry of Education,Science and Technology, and Reserve Bank—saw obvious benefits from our proposal. The Departmentof Immigration and Passport Office under the Ministry of Home Affairs was keen to link the nationalID with the passport issuance process and embed it within a border management solution to ensuresecure borders. Some departments were so eager to begin utilizing the ID systems after registrationthat we had to ask them to delay until the cards had been distributed in 2018.Development agencies were particularly interested in realizing this project, and, as it progressed,other institutions saw potential benefits and joined in. For example, UNICEF was not initially part ofthe planning stages, but when it became clear that children’s data would be collected, they joined foran additional round on the project. Likewise, I was contacted by several other institutions in thedevelopment community which were looking to utilize IDs for service delivery. One example wasGiveDirectly, an NGO that specializes in providing direct transfers to the poor. Robust and uniqueidentification is clearly essential for such programs to operate efficiently. Others such as theGesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and the Clinton Foundation also showedgreat interest.The private sector was also an enthusiastic booster for this project. We often had to ask them to delayimplementing ID requirements until we achieved sufficient coverage. Three groups expressedparticular interest. First, banks recognized immediately that universal ID coverage provides thenecessary underlying infrastructure to successfully offer a range of financial products, particularlycredit. Second, universal ID coverage makes it much easier for mobile money operators to comply withknow-your-customer legal requirements. Third, tobacco farmers could build their own wage andsubsidy delivery mechanisms off a universal ID system, rather than having to implement their own,more costly, solutions.IV. PLANNING STRATEGICALLYThe agreed-upon timeline called for us to finish planning by the first quarter of 2017, with massregistration to be completed by the end of the year. We estimated that we would need to register ninemillion Malawians, with all ID cards to be distributed by 30 June 2018, and to have the NationalIdentification and Registration System transitioned to NRB by the end of 2018.The implementation team was led by me and consisted of a core team of 19 members that constitutedfull-time UNDP staff. We hired 4,200 registration officers (RO)—young Malawians, mostly from collegeand universities of Malawi—to work on the ground. Between the government and developmentpartners, we had around 4,500 people involved in this project over six months.The registration period was supposed to begin in mid-June, but I pushed the project implementationearly. When “proof-of-Concept’ was successful, there was no need for pilot. I don’t feel comfortable7MALAWI’S JOURNEY TOWARDS TRANSFORMATION

with pilot projects. My experience is that if you become too focused on the pilot, it becomes the projectin itself and the primary project waits for an indefinite time in search of perfection. Paying moreattention to the minutest details during planning pays off more than running a pilot. A proof-ofconcept was already done; hence I didn’t see the need for a pilot. The result: we were able to begin inMay 2017 and finished the final registrations early, on 24 November. In a record time of 180 days, 9.1million citizens were registered with their biometric attributes! Malawi’s first ever multi-modalbiometric citizen database was established.Throughout the planning stages, we had to make several strategic decisions to overcome a variety ofchallenges posed by the task of registering an entire country with accurate data. We can consider eachof the issues and the choices we made to address them.Trust DeficitIn a project like this, simply taking input from government and development partners is not enough,because the real stakeholders are the average citizens served by those institutions. In seeking out thisfeedback, I encountered a fair amount of skepticism due to the previous failed attempts at massregistration. My discussions with Malawians, shopkeepers in the market, and the people I interactedwith in the street revealed a unanimous opinion that this project would not happen, driven largely bythe experiences of previous failures of the government of Malawi.To combat these negative expectations and build enthusiasm, we launched a robust civic educationcampaign, and carried out a proof of concept for the parliamentarians and civil bureaucrats, makingand delivering the same National ID cards to them. Hence, initially the National ID cards were givento parliamentarian and civil servants after registration of their biometric attributes. This created agoodwill gesture and an impression that this project was doable. But on the other hand, the fact thatthe proof-of-concept phase registered only parliamentarians and civil servants (total 55,000) prior togoing to the masses of people created an impression that the project was for the elites. To avoid thisperception and ensure that we truly believed in leaving no one behind in our goal of universalcoverage, we also maintained consistent contact with the media and initiated meetings with allpolitical stakeholders. These included political parties, and faith-based organizations which play anoutsized role in Malawian democracy. Our commitment to transparency was key to overcoming thetrust deficit that previous failed efforts led by government had left in place.Lack of Infrastructure and the Mass Registration StrategyPhysical infrastructure requirements posed a substantial obstacle to accomplishing a nationwide massregistration campaign. Seventy percent of Malawi lacks electricity. The 28 district offices without anybasic facilities were insufficient to register all citizens, and we did not have the budget to build manymore offices from scratch. We therefore developed a ‘Request for Proposal’ that called for a portableoffice model using 2,000 solar-powered Biometric Registration Kits (BRK) to carry out rapidregistrations. Each BRK includes a digital camera, laptop, fingerprint scanner, card reader, photobooth, solar panel, and other peripheral equipment.We decided to deploy the BRKs in a particular pattern: each region, which consisted of four or fivedistricts, represented a phase, and a phased approach was used to cover the population. All BRKswould be deployed in a first wave in a region to register everybody. Some kits would then be left behindfor continuing registrations, with the rest continuing to the next region. This deployment strategy8MALAWI’S JOURNEY TOWARDS TRANSFORMATION

aimed to combine the benefits of mass registration with the recognition that it would not be possibleto cover everyone at the first attempt.We also established a call center and SMS USSD service in place with two Telco operators to help withcustomer service needs, and a comprehensive complaint redressal system for citizens.Finally, we also needed in-country transportation. GoM committed to providing 800 vehicles as an inkind contribution for the exercise but unfortunately, we had to live with 120 vehicles to conduct massregistration and alter our plan on the fly due to the scarce transportation provided by the government.The BRKs generally performed quite well, although we did have to adjust for their overuse withoutadequate time for battery charging. Typically, the BRKs were started up at 6 am and would be used toregister citizens till dark at 6 or 7 pm, leaving no time to recharge them. Due to the increased demandcreated by the robust civic education campaign, the ROs continued to register citizens from sunrise tosunset in two shifts. As a result, we needed to purchase extra batteries for the BRKs and develop adistribution strategy to get them to the teams in the field. A few BRKs were used very roughly so thatrapid response teams of technicians had to be made available to fix them on the spot.Following the end of mass enrollment, the BRKs have remained in Malawi as a government asset. As ascarce resource, they have created competition between ministries, pushing the ministries to honetheir respective business cases to justify their use. For example, the Health Ministry wants to equip853 of their healthcare facilities with BRKs to collect vital statistics and record live births, and, as notedbefore, the Malawi Electoral Commission is already using these BRKs for its voter registration drive.Lack of Skilled ResourcesEven though there are several international agencies working in Malawi with the goal to train four tofive thousand professionals in information and communication technology (ICT) skills by 2019, askilled work force was not available. We therefore saw an opportunity to use the project to create apositive spillover—to rapidly train a cohort of workers who could provide ongoing support for the IDsystem and its applications. At the end of the project this workforce is still available to contribute incountry’s progress.To streamline the hiring process, we approached local universities and collaborated with consultantsto develop an online-based competency test to identify the best candidates. UNDP with the help ofconsultant prepared job descriptions, while selection and human resources management was to bedone on merit via the online test. We emphasized hiring young Malawians, considering the need toensure gender balance, and to make accommodations for persons with disabilities (box 1). The crashtraining course included creating a sense of mission—evangelizing why ID is important, and why theproject was a patriotic undertaking, on top of skills training. Developing the training curriculum wasa project unto itself. We had to create digital audio and video content from scratch and ended upbooking all the hotels in the capital of the country—Lilongwe—for three months to carry out thetraining.When we talk about linkages, we must also recognize that many government departments andministries will need a workforce to be able to work with the ID system once it has been established andtaken over in full by the NRB. That alone was calculated to require a staff of hundreds of trained skilledtechnical staff to manage the ID program going forward. In addition, border management and9MALAWI’S JOURNEY TOWARDS TRANSFORMATION

security, the immigration department, airports, the revenue and tax authority, the trafficdepartment, banks—all will need technically competent workers to incorporate the unique ID systeminto their own digital infrastructure. The same workforce is now being used for the voter registrationdrive and in the census exercise. We can reasonably expect this workforce to become a backbone ofMalawi's increasingly digitized economy. In addition, nearby Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia,Nigeria, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, and Kenya have all embarked on biometric ID programs, whichmeans that this training can potentially open doors of opportunity beyond Malawi’s borders.As a new project, the national ID program offered an opportunity to employ members ofdisadvantaged groups and, equally important, to help demonstrate their potential to society. We tookspecial efforts to ensure fair representation of protected classes, including persons with disabilities,women, and albinos, who face severe problems of discrimination, violence and even ritual murder inMalawi. 3 Among the albinos, this meant we also had to take extra security precautions to guaranteetheir safety. One albino RO who easily passed the online test and was selected, called this experiencean “identity quest,” and a way to prove that albinos can work even better than others. This manmanaged to register 8,000 people, became a BRK troubleshooter, and earned enough money tocontinue for a master’s degree in computer WI’S JOURNEY TOWARDS TRANSFORMATION

Box 1. Demonstrating the Capability of Disadvantaged GroupsDisability Not Inability: John’s Determination to SucceedJohn doing what he does bestWhen Everyone Else Says You Can’t, Determination Says “Yes You Can.”Thirty-four-year-old John Mwangonde from Mwambuli Village in Karonga District was diagnosedwith poliomyelitis at the early age of 6. “When I first lost the ability to use my legs, my familythought I was bewitched so it was a while before I was taken to the hospital where they told us itwas polio and that I was going to stay that way, unable to walk,” John tells.He explains how, after he become a paraplegic, his family could not afford a wheelchair and howhe had to crawl to get around, including going to school. Despite the nearest school being 8kilometers away, John was determined to stay in school. “I saw how a lot of people withpredicaments like mine found it too much of a challenge to get to school and decided to stay athome. Something in me always kept me going even though it was not easy to go to school everyday,” John explains.He explains how his mother kept repeating to him and to his family that he was meant for greatthings and that he would someday become a very important person in their community. Her wordsmotivated John to stay in school, and whilst all his siblings eventually dropped out, he kept his11MALAWI’S JOURNEY TOWARDS TRANSFORMATION

determination and passed his Primary School Leaving Examinations and proceeded to aCommunity Day Secondary School near his home where he was among the top students in his class.“One day, a well-wisher came to our school and saw me. I was the only one in my class with aphysical disability and he said my life story and determination inspired him and he committed topay all my school expenses and facilitated the provision of my first wheelchair,” John tells.Although John’s final grades for the Malawi School Certificate of Education Examination werequite good, he was not selected to the University of Malawi, but he was offered a chance to studyfor a Diploma in Community Development by the Malawi Council for the Handicapped. “After Iobtained my Diploma in Community Development, the biggest challenge I faced was that most ofthe job opportunities that were being advertised in that field required a lot of mobility and for oneto know how to ride a motorcycle, which was not possible for me, so I ended up being unemployedfor a long time,” he explains.According to John, despite his qualifications as a Community Development worker, his passion wasalways in electronic gadgets, and especially in computers. “I knew how to fix things like computers,simply by studying others doing it. I therefore decided to go back to school a

This is the story of Malawi's National ID Project as narrated by Tariq Malik, chief technical advisor to UNDP, who spearheaded this project, to Alan Gelb and Kyle Navis at the Center for Global Development. In 2018 CGD encouraged further research to update information related to the project.