Morocco has made the population census one of its priorities. In this sense, it has adopted the Aadhaar system, implemented by India in 2010, to census its population.
Morocco and the Philippines have adopted India’s Aadhaar open source technology architecture to build similar unique identification systems for their citizens,” a senior official in New Delhi told The Economic Times, noting that other countries such as Kenya, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Mexico, Singapore and Egypt are showing interest in the system and have already sent their applications to the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). According to him, this sudden interest in Aadhaar is due to the concern of these countries to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) published in 2016, one of which calls for all people to have a legal entity by 2030.
“Currently, the number of countries that have a good legal identity for all is still very limited. That’s why all these countries are interested in it. And Aadhaar is a digital legal identity. So it goes further. And it also means that it is much more flexible and usable to a higher degree,” said the same source. Aadhaar provides every resident of India with a 12-digit number from its biometric and demographic database. New Delhi had implemented the system in 2010 to enumerate the country’s population.
