CERTIZENS Africa Podcast

From voter registration to accessing healthcare and other public services, or getting a SIM card, ID documents are indispensable to everyday life. On the African continent, the number of people living without ID documents has reached an epidemic scale: they make up 50% of the estimated one billion people living worldwide without formal proof of identity.

This is the podcast of the Certifications of Citizenship in Africa (CERTIZENS) project, which considers how politics, policy and practice relating to citizen classification, certification and identification shape both citizens and states in selected African contexts. The project is led by Professor Amanda Hammar from the Centre of African Studies (CAS), University of Copenhagen, in collaboration with teams at CAS and the University of Ghana, Legon, and Makerere University in Uganda.

Through conversations, interviews and debates among scholars, practitioners and policy makers, the CERTIZENS Africa podcast provides a platform to explore the complexities, challenges and implications of current and emerging systems of citizen classification certification and identification, and the forms of ID they generate, both in African and global contexts.