In Uganda today, citizenship is increasingly mediated by a number. The National Identification Number, printed on a small plastic card, has become the gateway to modern life.
It unlocks bank accounts, SIM cards, loans, government programmes, passports, and the right to vote. Without it, participation in society is not merely delayed; it is denied. Yet for thousands of Ugandans, that gateway is jammed.
Across the country, persistent failures in the National Identification and Registration Authority’s digital ID system have left citizens stranded in bureaucratic limbo. Applications vanish into silence.
Renewal dates stretch into months. Errors made years ago resurface with devastating consequences. As Uganda moves toward the 2026 general elections, the costs of these failures are no longer abstract; they are economic, social, and political.
“WITHOUT IT, YOU ARE LIKE A GHOST”
For Jackson Ampiire, a boda boda rider in Kampala, the national ID is not a document; it is survival.
“If you don’t have a national ID, you can’t access a loan,” he said. “Some schools even demand parents’ NINs for child enrolment.”
Without it, Ampiire argues, a person effectively disappears from systems built on digital verification.
“Without it, you are like a ghost.” That sense of invisibility is echoed at NIRA registration centres such as Kololo, where queues stretch for days, and information is scarce. Timothy Apolot, who renewed his ID months ago, is still waiting.
“I did my renewal, but there is no feedback,” he said. “The pickup dates are vague.”
With voter registration tied to national IDs, these delays risk turning administrative failure into political exclusion. For Asingwire Phemia, a student at Makerere University, the absence of a national ID nearly derailed her education.
“It is very difficult to do transactions on campus without a bank account,” she said. “When I tried to open one, they asked for my ID. If not, they wanted the NIN.”
That requirement sent her to Kololo, where days were spent in line. Even after registering in August, she waited three months for the card.
“Whenever I tried to open a bank account, they kept asking for the NIN, even with the registration papers,” she said. Repeated visits yielded little.
“I could arrive early and leave at 2 pm without help.” Her breakthrough came not through the system, but through informal networks, a chance encounter with a fellow tribe mate who shared contacts that eventually led her to collect the ID in Wandegeya.
“I almost gave up,” Phemia said. “I was traumatised watching others get help while I waited.”
LIVELIHOODS ON PAUSE
In Mbarara, the consequences are harsher still. Asiimwe Derick, a driver, renewed his ID in July 2025. Months later, it remains unavailable. When his driving permit expired in October, renewal offices rejected his NIRA paperwork.
“They tell me those papers don’t work,” he said. “Now my work is on hold.”
Without an ID, Derick’s income has stopped entirely, an outcome shared by many informal workers whose livelihoods depend on valid documentation. Muyanja Ronald Kwagala, a teacher and youth development specialist, describes a similar silence.
“I renewed on the second day of mass renewal. To this day, nothing,” he said. “I have messaged NIRA on X, WhatsApp, and email. No response.” For Kwagala, the problem is not data collection, but accountability.
“The system takes your information, but it doesn’t talk back.”
ERRORS THAT FOLLOW PEOPLE FOR YEARS
At NIRA’s Rukungiri office, registration assistant Emily Namugabe acknowledges that errors are a major bottleneck.
“Errors happen on our side and on the clients’ side,” she said.
Each day, at least five of the roughly 200 clients face problems with names or dates of birth, many tracing back to mass registrations in 2017, when young applicants made mistakes that now carry lifelong consequences. Women who change surnames after marriage add another layer of complexity.
NIRA has introduced dual-screen verification and stricter documentation requirements, but Namugabe admits the fixes are incomplete. The result is prolonged administrative paralysis, for citizens who cannot correct the past or move forward.
In Mityana District, the digital divide has direct financial consequences. One resident, who asked not to be named, was selected for Parish Development Model funding, only to be excluded at the final stage.
“They told me I could not be entered into the system without a NIN,” he said. His ID was still pending. The funds never came.
“They told me to wait for the next phase,” he said. “But how long should we wait?”
ELECTIONS AND THE RISK OF DISENFRANCHISEMENT
Without national IDs or accessible NINs, Ugandans are locked out of loans, savings groups, PDM funds, Emyooga programmes, and civic life itself.
“Without the ID, you can’t access many things, even voting,” Ampiire said.
The Electoral Commission has since sought to ease fears, announcing that voters without national IDs can use voter location slips. But civil society groups warn that reliance on workarounds underscores a deeper failure: a digital system that has become too central to fail, yet too fragile to trust.
NIRA speaks of technological upgrades, but citizens describe a system that is overwhelmed, opaque, and unresponsive. Vague timelines, alleged bribery, broken communication channels, and dependence on informal connections continue to define access.
As Uganda approaches a critical election cycle, the danger is no longer just inconvenience. It is the exclusion of students, workers, and would-be voters rendered invisible by a system designed to recognise them.
Unless urgent reforms introduce clear tracking, responsive helplines, and mass correction mechanisms, Uganda’s digital ID project risks producing a paradox of modern governance: citizens who exist physically, but not administratively present everywhere, yet counted nowhere.
NIRA RESPONDS
Under growing pressure, NIRA has moved to contain the fallout. In recent months, it has rolled out nationwide enrollment and renewal campaigns, tightened document verification requirements, and introduced technology upgrades such as dual-screen systems designed to reduce data-entry errors.
By mid-2025, officials reported more than 9.1 million new registrations and about 5.3 million renewals through the mass exercise. The Ministry of Internal Affairs has also stepped in, suspending and arresting officials accused of extorting applicants, an acknowledgement that corruption has been part of the problem.
Yet the numbers reveal a troubling gap between effort and outcome. Parliament was told that around 18 million Ugandans were targeted in the ongoing enrollment and renewal process.
Of these, only about 13 million were successfully registered, and just 1.7 million national ID cards had been printed and were ready for collection at the time of reporting.
The result is a growing population of citizens who exist in the database but not in daily life, recorded in the system, yet unable to use their NINs to open bank accounts, access government programmes, or register to vote.
Data errors continue to deepen this exclusion. NIRA assessments and independent research show that misspelled names account for roughly 45 per cent of reported registration errors, while incorrect or missing birth dates make up about 16.6 per cent.
Other cases involve unclear fingerprints and inconsistent signatures. Many of these mistakes trace back to the first wave of registrations between 2014 and 2017, when applicants, often young or poorly guided, entered incorrect information that has since proved difficult to correct.
During a recent renewal drive alone, more than 10,000 IDs were rejected because of false or mismatched data. Facing public frustration, NIRA has adopted a mix of admission and defence.
It has acknowledged operational shortcomings while pushing back against what it describes as exaggerated criticism. To curb bribery, the authority and the ministry of Internal Affairs have made public arrests of temporary registration assistants and suspected impostors accused of selling free forms, fast-tracking queues, or charging illegal fees.
NIRA has issued official uniforms and ID badges to help citizens identify legitimate staff, and it has activated toll-free lines and email channels for reporting abuse. The agency continues to insist that registration and renewal services are free, warning Ugandans against paying for pre-registration or expedited processing.
Online pre-registration portals have also been introduced to ease congestion at physical centres. Whether these measures can close the widening gap—before the country heads to the polls—remains an open and urgent question.