South Africa will upgrade the country’s national identification system using NEC’s t fingerprint identification technology. The work is scheduled to commence this coming June.

The South African Government issues an ID booklet to all citizens over 16 years of age that adopts fingerprinting as a method of personal identification. This booklet is used to confirm an individual’s identity in a diverse range of scenarios, from public services, such as electoral registration and management of pension payments, to vehicle purchases and video rental. The key technology underpinning the system is NEC’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS).

The existing system has operated as one of the world’s largest fingerprint-based national ID systems since 2002, and has the capacity to house data on 45 million citizens. Not only has it greatly reduced the time it takes to identify individuals, the system has also contributed to a much more equitable society by preventing fraudulent activities such as over-collection of welfare benefits and identity and personal information theft.

The contracted upgrade will expand systems capacity to 50 million data entries. NEC will upgrade facilities using the company’s latest hardware and software products to further improve system processing capabilities and ensure service continuity, even in the event of partial equipment failure. The Government of South Africa is presently studying the feasibility of replacing the existing ID booklet with an ID card, a concept that was originally proposed for the existing system. However, any move towards a “smart card” system will likely be based on the NEC system already in operation.

NEC’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System delivers the world’s highest level of identification precision with over 99.9% accuracy. It offers compatibility with the large-scale database operations of government-level agencies that require high speed and large volume data verification.