The program has completed a laboratory-based pilot test of the ID platform called Fayda and is currently on its use case pilot rollout to enroll 100,000 residents by the end of June. Utilizing local capacity, NIDP has customized an open-source platform called MOSIP based on local context, and also drafted a legal proclamation that will soon be passed to the Council of Ministers. The Fayda Platform (id.gov.et/idservices) is a biometric-based Identification platform based on open standards to be customized by different countries and integrated with multiple other technologies including biometric device technologies and Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) solutions. This customized platform named “Fayda”, meaning “Value” in multiple Ethiopian Languages, is now under pilot implementation to explore strengths and improvement areas before the national rollout. 

The pilot implementation so far (making around 25,000 registrations) exposed a host of technical and operational lessons that inform the planning and implementation of subsequent phases. Accordingly, field trials are planned as part of the pilot on selected use cases such as Industrial Park Development Corporation (IPDC),Productive Safety Net Programs (PSNP), Ministries, and Banks. 

The main areas of focus for the pilot project include:

1. Technology and platform testing
2. Field implementation and enrollment
3. Assessing key principles such as inclusion and data protection.
4. Endorsing the draft ID proclamation, and
5. Capacity and team building

Building on early insights from the first round of testing (lab-based and field-based soft pilots), the ongoing “Use-case based Pilot phase will deploy its technical and operational design to test further registration capabilities as well as authentication features with a series of partnering Ministries and other stakeholders.

This current “Use-case Pilot” targets to enroll 100,000 residents within certain sectoral service providers and conduct at least 5,000 authentications. Overall, this pilot includes registration/enrollment, ID and credentials generation as well as online and offline verification/authentication. After the current phase that is expected to be completed in the current fiscal year, a pre-launch phase is in the pipeline for another 500,000 enrollments as its target. This trend is expected to increase exponentially until  the end of 2025.