Kenya's politics of ID cards is creating poverty and exclusion

Written by Otiato Guguyu

At the beginning of the year, Kisumu had suffered a logistical chokehold from the great western migration that delayed the transportation of people and goods from the Capital Nairobi to the lakeside city.

In Kenya, bus companies double up as couriers, and the transport hitch meant we had to wait more than a week to get parcels that typically come in a day. This was hectic, we had to show up at the booking office every other day only to learn that the parcels had yet to arrive.

This was worse for those who had to travel from the villages outside Kisumu coming long distances and having to turn back empty-handed and anxious about the state and safety of one's parcel.

So the next time I was in that queue, waiting my turn among very irritable customers and embarrassed personnel, there was a girl at the head of it. She was barely 18 and looked tired and agitated like the rest of us.

At the counter, while she was lucky to find her parcel, she started mumbling when they asked her to produce her Identification Card. The embarrassed personnel suddenly turned self-righteous and swore they would rather put her parcel on the bus back to Nairobi than give it to her without the document.

She was lucky twice because she had a waiting card- a piece of printed paper that serves as the temporary ID while awaiting processing of the citizenship document, and was able to get the parcel, academic documents she probably needed to advance her schooling or apply for employment.

I realized this document which I take for granted, is an invisible wall keeping young people, especially in rural Kenya, poor, from lack of access to very everyday opportunities.

Cost of being Kenyan

Kenya has been playing politics with the citizenship document, the Identity Card, that was adopted from the British Kipande system used to control the movement of Africans.

Today ID cards is synonymous with access to the political right to vote, access to physical buildings as a security check, essential to own and operate financial accounts, and even just basic liberty and it helps avoid arrests and harassment by police.

While this has made the document essential a huge chunk of the population especially from marginalized communities in rural areas have been unable to access it partly through the legacy of exclusion, a rising cost to afford the document.

The Kenya Kwanza government has pushed through International Monetary Fund reforms that would require Kenyans to pay more for the document. The cards had been free but a fee of Kes1,000 was introduced without any advance notice. The cost of replacing ID cards has also increased 20-fold to Kes2,000.

State officials are openly selling the idea that Citizenship is not guaranteed by birth, but has to be subscribed on a renewable basis.

Under the National Integrated Identity Management Systems (NIIMS) persons without national identification card shall not be issued with Huduma Card. That means such people shall have no option but to be registered as foreigners and issued with a foreign Huduma Card which shall further disadvantage them by rendering them stateless yet stateless persons are not recognized in the regulations.

Attempts by the government to overhaul the system and introduce digital identities has however been hampered by lack of transparency halting the process that in turn led to a backlog on issues of these crucial documents.

Manufacturing poverty

This politics has left a huge chunk of the population locked out of society and poor. A survey conducted by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), Central bank of Kenya and British trust Financial Sector Deepening Kenya (FSD Kenya) showed nearly 10 percent of adult Kenyans, about 3.4 million, mostly from rural areas, are poor primarily because they lacked access to this document or a mobile phone.

Without ID cards they simply could not send or receive money, engage in the exploding digital trade and mobile money or were physically denied entry into some spaces.

“About 9.9 percent of Kenyan adults remain financially excluded, with rural youth forming nearly half of this group (45.5percent). Key barriers to exclusion include the inability to afford a phone (64.1 percent) and lack of Identity Card (51.5 percent,” read the FinAcess 20204 report.

This is a disaster for Kenya given that young people make up half the country and it is this demographic, that is expected to save Kenya.

Currently for every working Kenyan, there are two dependents a child/pensioner. However Kenya is on the cusp of a demographic dividend where an educated youthful population is emerging that will overturn the dependency ratio.

Having two working young people for every dependent will deliver an economic boom since more people are economically active than there will be dependents. This is the way to build up enough savings to reduce the cost of credit. But only if these young population is involved in economic activity and is able to generate savings in the first place.

2027 politics

With young people at a crucial point where they will determine the economic future of this country, the demands to determine the political future are coincidentally coalescing around ID cards.

Identity cards is shaping up to be the defining factor of 2027 politics with the idea that granting those who have been excluded from society will automatically result in being rewarded on the ballot.

Busia Senator Okiya Omtatah acknowledges the power of young people by focusing his campaign on getting 10 million young people to back his bid. He is building his first presidential bid on the momentum of last year's Jun25 Gen Z protests with the key figures in the mobilization like Activist Hanifa Farsaf backing his campaign.

The outsider of Kenya’s mainstream politics is showing that campaigns can be empowering. Under his Identity Yetu Kenya ni yetu campaign, his messaging has focused on getting young people Identity cards so they can get access to financial solutions and participate in the economy.

Tribal Politics

His rival President William Ruto has instead returned to the older-generation ethnic mobilisation, weaponizing the politics of ID cards to raise tribal animosity that could bolster his support given the failure of his administration.

President Ruto has stoked Somali–Kikuyu politics as he abolished vetting for ID cards for border communities, accusing former Kenyatta administration of using local administration to suppress Somali numbers.

But the reality is far from that, High Court cancelled Kenya National Bureau of Statistics census after the government refused to recognize about 19,714 Kenyans who had been registered as refugees.

Court papers indicate the parents had registered them as refugees during drought to benefit from aid, but when the 14,762 Kenyans from Garissa and the 4952 persons from Wajir hit 18 they were wrongly denied citizenship because their names appeared in the register of refugees.

It was also submitted that some genuine Kenyans in areas close to refugee camps such as Daadab and Kakuma were inadvertently registered as refugees so as to have access to the necessities available for refugees such as medical services and food.

But in the politics of deceptions President William Ruto is riding on the impression of dismantling tribal exclusions set up by the previous administration to garner support and inflate the numbers of those affected.

Politics of Citizenship

It is clear that ID cards and voter registration will be key in determining the winner of the next election as polls agency the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) sets out to register about 5.6 million new voters for the 2027 general election.

But for Kenyans who lack ID cards it is not a matter of mere votes, it is a matter of access to socio-economic well-being and citizenship rights, with affected members are living a life of indignity as they fear being harassed by the state authorities for lack of national identity cards.