IMANI Africa’s Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy has called for the suspension of the planned 2026 re-registration exercise.
From its observation, the policy as it stands is plagued by procedural errors, data protection failures, and procurement opacity, just as the three previously failed exercises in the past 15 years.
Flaws
“What is most troubling about the 2026 exercise is not merely that it is happening again, but that it is happening without any evidence of institutional learning from the three that preceded it. IMANI’s analysis identifies a consistent set of technical and operational failures across all previous exercises.
“For instance, the absence of NIA authentication, scattered databases, poor inter-agency integration, unreliable registration platforms, impossible deadlines, and an insufficient Ghana Card penetration rate at the time of registration.
“Operationally, registration centres were overwhelmed, and for those who boycotted the process, the government’s response was to temporarily deactivate their SIM cards—an illegal sanction that disrupted services to over 9 million subscribers and froze over GH₵200 million in mobile money transactions.”
Proposal
In the view of IMANI, another mass re-registration is not logical or cost-effective, as it suggests a targeted verification and validation exercise—one that accounts for the 2022 biometric data, cleans and audits what is usable, and directs re-collection only at the 20% of subscribers whose identities remain unverified.
“This approach preserves existing investment, reduces cost to subscribers and the state, and eliminates the procurement rent-seeking that a full re-registration exercise enables.”
It suggested that the architecture for any new exercise should follow a ‘verify and forget’ model; telcos collect user identifiers, the NCA verifies against the NIA, the NIA returns a binary yes/no verdict, and the telcos activate or suspend the SIM accordingly.
By that architecture, biometric data is never transferred to telcos or vendors, while Audit logs are maintained for all access, with the NIA retaining exclusive custody of all biometric records.
It further suggested that seven safeguards must also be embedded in the legislative and operational framework: exclusive NIA custody of biometric data; verification-only data returns; minimised data collection; prohibition on cross-database matching to prevent the creation of a surveillance infrastructure; tamper-evident access logs; user access and control over stored information; and a verifiable right to confirm deletion of old biometric data.
“Critically, a new Legislative Instrument is currently under review. Whether this L. I embed the ‘verify and forget’ model, or whether it leaves the door open for data transfer to telcos and vendors, will determine whether the 2026 exercise represents genuine reform or another iteration of the same cycle. The public is entitled to see the draft provisions of the L. I need to engage them before the exercise proceeds.”
Story by Hajara Fuseini
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Source:
opemsuo.com
