Ugandan government, Section 54 of ROPA translates this government responsibility into an individual mandate that requires all persons in Uganda to register.170 3. More than just an identity card: the complexity of the Ndaga Muntu system The Ndaga Muntu card (NIC) has become the most visible aspect of the national ID project in Uganda, but it is only one piece of a much larger, more complex national identification system established by ROPA. This includes the physical card itself, the unique National ID Number (NIN), and the profiles of individuals that are held in the National Identity Register (NIR) which contain detailed biographic and other personal information as well as biometrics (fingerprints and facial scan). The Ndaga Muntu system also includes the Civil Register, a legacy system inherited from the URSB, which holds records on births, adoptions, and deaths.171 NIRA has also developed a Third-Party Interface that allows MDAs and private actors to directly access information in the NIR. And finally, the national ID project consists of hardware and software used to operate the system, including servers in Kampala, biometric verification equipment, facial recognition software and so on. The National ID system is both a documentary and a biometric system.172 It is a documentary system in the sense that it requires a written documentary testament to prove one’s citizenship or right to live in Uganda. The struggle of the Maragoli people to have their tribal affiliation written into the Constitution, and thus recognized in the national ID system, demonstrates the importance documentation plays in the national ID system.173 The system is also documentary in the sense that it continues to issue a physical document–the Ndaga Muntu card–that acts as sufficient proof of legal identity. Such physical documentation has a long history on the African continent, and Ndaga Muntu can be seen as a continuation of this legacy. But Ndaga Muntu is also a biometric system that captures physical characteristics of individuals, currently their fingerprints and their facial features, to computationally identify them as unique individuals. NIRA has both a fingerprint verification engine and facial recognition technology that it can apply to individual records. This in theory allows the NIR to undergo a process of de-duplication, ensuring that each individual record represents a unique individual. The NIC combined with a card reader also allows fingerprints to be matched against the data on the NIC using a fingerprint scanner. 4. “Getting a National ID is a nightmare”: A helicopter view of Ndaga Muntu The second section of the report outlined the stark reality of what it means to be excluded from and by Ndaga Muntu. Some proponents of digital ID would suggest that these exclusions are unfortunate growing pains of any registration drive–a tragic but inevitable part of administering a complex population registration system in a developing country with millions of people. We strongly disagree. The numbers suggest that the problem of exclusion is not limited to an unfortunate few but is affecting millions of people in Uganda. Because of the design and administration of the national ID system, in our view, this is not a transitory problem that can be resolved with some quick fixes. How a National Security Approach to Uganda’s National Digital ID Has Led to Wholesale Exclusion of Women and Older Persons 67