Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda national IDs face high document fraud attacks in Africa – Report
East African countries have recorded the most document fraud attacks in the last two years with most of these attacks directed at National ID cards.
According to a report by digital identity and fraud detection software company Smile Identity (Smile ID), 11 out of 19 attacks were on national IDs, translating to an estimated 80%, with countries like Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania being the most affected.
Tanzania ranked second in the list of countries whose documents are the most attacked across Africa with a 32% attempted fraud rate involving National ID cards.
Kenya’s National ID followed with 26%, and Uganda came in fourth with a 25% attempted fraud rate.
South Africa which was first on the list had the most attacks directed at its Green Book which provides data on the likely impacts of climate change and urbanisation on the country’s cities and towns.
The report noted that the high number of attacks involving national IDs is a result of the use of the same as a key government identification document in most of these countries.
These documents expose holders to potential document fraud when they are stolen or lost.
According to data collected from biometric document verifications completed by Smile ID between 2021 and 2023, 11% of other documents were used for fraud attacks while 6.6% of passports, 2.2% of voter IDs, and 1.3% of Drivers licenses were used for these scam activities.
“Many African countries have either recently implemented new national IDs or plan to in the coming years. Logistical issues around properly discarding the older IDs can lead to them falling into the wrong hands. An excellent example is South Africa, where the older Green ID card saw significant fraud targeting,” portions of the report said.
The report further noted that Central and East Africa led the continent in average fraud rates in 2023 with peaks of 29% and 30% respectively. West Africa peaked at 17% in October before reversing and these rates declined in November and December for all regions except Central Africa.
