The government has set a target of issuing three million national identity cards by the end of 2026 as part of an ongoing nationwide registration exercise aimed at enhancing access to citizenship documents and public services.

Speaking before the National Assembly Committee on Regional Integration at Parliament Buildings on Tuesday, June 23, 2026, Principal Secretary for Immigration and Citizen Services Belio Kipsang said the government has improved the efficiency of ID issuance through digital technology.

Kipsang told lawmakers that the State Department had transitioned from a manual registration system to a digital platform that captures and scans documents electronically, enabling faster processing of identity cards.

“Hon. Members, we have invested in technology; we moved from a manual system of issuing ID cards to a digital system where we scan all documents in the live capture equipment; this allows us to issue this important document within ten days and a replacement for the same within a day,” Kipsang said.

The previous number of IDs issued

The PS revealed that 1.5 million IDs had been issued in the last five months alone, compared to 1.9 million issued throughout 2025. He expressed confidence that the government would meet its target of issuing three million IDs by the end of the year.

He attributed the increase to the removal of the vetting process, which he said had previously locked out many eligible Kenyans from obtaining identification documents.

“Since we started using the live capture equipment, in five months we have issued 1.5 million ID cards. We project to issue 3 million by the end of this year. This is because of the efficiency in stopping the vetting process, which had denied many Kenyans a chance to get ID cards,” he said.

Murkomen on technology

This comes days after Interior CS Kipchumba Murkomen said the government is adopting the technology that will enable security agencies to match faces captured by CCTV cameras with official government records, including ID photos.

Murkomen stated that this will allow police to quickly identify individuals suspected of committing crimes.

“We do not have a database with facial recognition technology that already has the facial recognition for Kenyans, where you merge the faces you get from the cameras to the database to establish the credentials of an individual,” Murkomen stated.

“Once we establish this technology, we will slowly build in the data of various people based on information in the ID. Police will now be able to use the faces of Kenyans with their pictures in the official data,” he added.