End and Start of a Quest to Sustainability
Seven years ago (2019), when NIDP began exploring MOSIP, the driving philosophy was never about adopting a ready-made foreign solution. It was about building sovereign capability from the ground up.
That’s why:
- MOSIP was chosen — open source, modular, customizable, locally maintainable. No vendor lock-in by design.
- IIIT Bangalore partnership (June 2020) focused on knowledge transfer and code ownership, not dependency.
- Local customization was intensive — they bent MOSIP to Ethiopian requirements, not the reverse.
This year we deep dived into financial sustainability case study with Rahel Abraham Yitbarek, Saminas Seyfu and Yodahe Zemichael to capture this critical insight at ID4Africa.
By 2026 (7 years later), NIDP is now:
- 15+ million citizens registered
- Managing the system locally
- Scaling toward 90 million by 2027/2028
- Autonomous — no longer seeking external validation or dependency
That’s the real story: sustainability was embedded in the architecture from 2019, not added later. Ethiopia made autonomy the founding principle, not an afterthought.
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