Ghana’s planned nationwide SIM card registration exercise is facing mounting criticism from a digital strategist, an opposition lawmaker and consumer advocates, even as the National Communications Authority (NCA) insists an audit of two million records has confirmed the exercise is necessary.
The NCA Director-General, Rev. Edmund Yirenkyi Fianko, disclosed this week that a sample audit of approximately 2.3 million SIM records found that only 81 percent matched through facial verification, with zero successful matches recorded for biometric verification. “We took a small sample to determine whether to proceed or not, and the results clearly showed there were problems with the database,” he said.
But digital strategist Maximus Ametorgoh said the government’s response to those problems is disproportionate and inefficient. Speaking on the Asaase Breakfast Show, he questioned why Ghanaians should undergo a third registration cycle when the 2021 exercise already collected biometric data and phone numbers linked to Ghana Cards.
“I gave my phone number during Ghana Card registration. Now I’m being asked to use the same Ghana Card to register the same number again,” he said. Instead of a mass re-registration, he proposed a data integration model where authorities extract and verify existing records through SMS or digital authentication, reserving physical registration only for unresolved cases.
He also warned that despite assurances that telecom operators would absorb the GH¢5-per-SIM registration fee, consumers would ultimately bear the cost. “This becomes a cost line item for telcos, and they will transfer it back to customers,” he said.
NPP Member of Parliament for Akyem Swedru, Kennedy Nyarko Osei, made a similar argument, saying the government should not use a 20 percent discrepancy rate to justify a full nationwide exercise estimated to cost GH¢240 million. He proposed that authorities flag only the problematic SIM cards and require only affected users to re-register.
“All that the government, through the NCA and the NIA, has to do is to flag these SIM cards with questionable identities and allow those affected to re-register with their true identities,” he said, adding that the existing database should be capable of running fingerprint matches to identify duplicates and block suspicious lines pending in-person facial verification.
On privacy, cybersecurity expert Abubakar Issaka, President of the Cyber Security Experts Association Ghana, said the new system would introduce device-level tracking by linking mobile phones to users through IMEI numbers alongside biometric verification, describing it as “an upgraded version of the SIM card registration process” rather than a simple repeat of the previous exercise.
The NIA’s Executive Secretary, Wisdom Kwaku Deku, defended the clean-slate approach, arguing that migrating corrupted data from the old system into a new one would defeat the purpose of the exercise. He said the new process would deploy mobile app-based self-registration, assisted digital services, and facial recognition with liveness detection to prevent identity theft.
The NCA confirmed that the new exercise will register individual phone numbers rather than SIM cards and introduce a Central Equipment Identity Register linking mobile devices to verified users. The legal instrument governing the exercise has not yet been laid before Parliament, and the rollout will not commence until that process is complete.
