Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: The ability to prove your ID for a bank account
Speaker 2: or for public services may be taken for granted in
Speaker 2: much of the world, but many countries still lack this
Speaker 2: basic infrastructure.
Speaker 3: For about a billion people on the planet, there is
Speaker 3: no idea. They don't have anything that identifies them. Not
Speaker 3: an easy problem to solve, but technology is coming in
Speaker 3: the picture and things are moving really quickly. The Prime Minister,
Speaker 3: give us a sense. Don't give us just one reason.
Speaker 3: It's a big enough. I should give us two reasons,
Speaker 3: two reasons why it is essential that digital IDs are
Speaker 3: the top of your agenda in your country.
Speaker 2: It's seen as so important that it's actually a part
Speaker 2: of the un sustainable development goals.
Speaker 1: For the government of the DRC. Access to citizens' rights
Speaker 1: is a key aim to enable this. Proper population registry
Speaker 1: and the guarantee of a unique legal identity are.
Speaker 2: Essential, but the push for complicated biometric ID systems has
Speaker 2: meant expensive contracts in some of the poorest countries in
Speaker 2: the world, leaving the door open to corruption. On today's podcast,
Speaker 2: we'll explain how a twenty five million dollar shopping center
Speaker 2: in the DRC's second city, shows why the country still
Speaker 2: has no ID system and how money that was supposed
Speaker 2: to fund it may have ended up benefiting only a
Speaker 2: few I'm Jennifer's abasadjab and this is the Next Africa Podcast,
Speaker 2: bringing you one story each week from the continent driving
Speaker 2: the future of global growth with the context only Bloomberg
Speaker 2: can provide. This investigation is a partnership between Bloomberg and
Speaker 2: Lighthouse Reports reporter Thomas Statias, who's been working on this
Speaker 2: story and he is joining us this week.
Speaker 4: So Thomas, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a really fascinating story and there's so
Speaker 2: many different layers to it. But maybe before we get
Speaker 2: to the crux of the story, which is this ID
Speaker 2: card project that was turned into a shopping center, let's
Speaker 2: maybe take a step back and get some of the history.
Speaker 2: What's been behind the push for biometric ideas in Congo
Speaker 2: and other African countries, and also what made you interested
Speaker 2: in wanting to look into this.
Speaker 5: The behind the scenes story of the push on biometrics
Speaker 5: starts like more or less ten years ago, when two
Speaker 5: institutions the UN published something called the Sustainable Development Goals,
Speaker 5: which are like the goals that the UN and humanity
Speaker 5: was to achieve by twenty thirty, and one of his
Speaker 5: goals is actually for any individual on the planet to
Speaker 5: have a certain ID card and a certain identity defined
Speaker 5: by the States. And around the same time, essentially the
Speaker 5: World Bank, another multi electural institution, essentially start to push
Speaker 5: also for the same goal, but with the addition of
Speaker 5: a technology called the biometric technology, which is so to speak,
Speaker 5: everything that makes you unique as a person, so your fingerprint,
Speaker 5: your iris, your behavior and so on. So those two
Speaker 5: elements combined create a real gold rush for vendors that
Speaker 5: are mostly Western vendors, a lot of those of French,
Speaker 5: German and event from the US to go to this
Speaker 5: new market, which is the continent, the African continent, to
Speaker 5: try and sell this technology to those countries. As for
Speaker 5: the reason we wanted to get interested in that. In
Speaker 5: this fatnonership between Bloomberg and Lighthouse Reports, the investigative out
Speaker 5: that I'm working with is essentially there's a technoli solutionism narrative.
Speaker 6: Behind biometric technology.
Speaker 5: There's beside that technology can fix everything, it can fix election,
Speaker 5: it can fix unbalanced states, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 6: And this narrative is actually quite powerful.
Speaker 5: So we wanted to have a look at behind what's
Speaker 5: happening in some of the most extreme situations that we
Speaker 5: can find.
Speaker 2: Wow, and this is very extreme for people who get
Speaker 2: a chance to read it. So then let's get to
Speaker 2: maybe Congo, right, because this is the country that you
Speaker 2: focus on. What was the existing ID system that was
Speaker 2: there when you and the team started looking into this.
Speaker 5: Essentially, when we started to have a look at Congo,
Speaker 5: there are no kind of let's say, general identification system
Speaker 5: as we know it in some of other country, whether
Speaker 5: it's Southeast Asia, whether it's.
Speaker 6: Western Europe, whether it's North America.
Speaker 5: So in Congo, when we start to look at the system,
Speaker 5: there are no functioning idea, meaning people did not have
Speaker 5: driving licenses, the state has no idea how many citizens
Speaker 5: lived in Congo.
Speaker 6: The last census was performed in.
Speaker 5: Nineteen eighty four, so at the time the country was
Speaker 5: called Zaiah and the head of the state was someone
Speaker 5: that's actually I'm sure people listening to this podcast you
Speaker 5: know quite well whose name was Mobutu se Seco. So
Speaker 5: it was like forty years ago and essentially the only
Speaker 5: kind of identification that people have in day to day life.
Speaker 6: Or voting calls, but voting call are no proof.
Speaker 5: Of identity because essentially you can say whatever names you
Speaker 5: want to put on your voter cards because there is
Speaker 5: no unique identification system. So that was the starting pot
Speaker 5: from the investigation and along all those kinds of ideas
Speaker 5: that are not working properly in Congo. Congo had for
Speaker 5: a couple of years one of the most expensive passports
Speaker 5: in the world that costs one hundred eighty five dollars
Speaker 5: each passport essentially.
Speaker 2: And it's one of the ten poorest countries in the world.
Speaker 2: So that seems like a contradiction.
Speaker 5: It is a contradiction, but it is also a very
Speaker 5: important market. The last census in the RC stated that
Speaker 5: RC was populated of twenty million people. The protection by
Speaker 5: the UN state that you will be one of the
Speaker 5: giants of the African continent by twenty fifty and right
Speaker 5: now the population is estimated around one million inhabitants in Congo.
Speaker 6: So it is quite a big market for tho the vendors.
Speaker 5: So it is quite a hussle for all those company
Speaker 5: to try to set shop in the country, and there's
Speaker 5: a lot of money to be made, which is.
Speaker 2: Perhaps how you know we're at the situation now and
Speaker 2: Tomas I thought it was really interesting in the story.
Speaker 2: How you know that the fact that we mentioned this
Speaker 2: in the intro, some people take advantage of the fact
Speaker 2: that they have ideas, right, But in Congo, you noted
Speaker 2: that Congolese people feel like foreigners in their own country.
Speaker 6: They are they feel their offerings, but they're offerings.
Speaker 5: As I said, there is no kind of notification and
Speaker 5: it makes very concrete stuff for day to day lives
Speaker 5: for the people working, for instance, in the University of Kinshasa.
Speaker 5: It means they cannot check Casher check. It means they
Speaker 5: cannot send money abroad or they cannot receive money from abroad.
Speaker 5: I remember meeting this guy around the community center in
Speaker 5: Kinshasa telling me that he was having an interview for
Speaker 5: a job to be a pull attendant at the US Embassy.
Speaker 5: That if he doesn't have any kind of identifications, you
Speaker 5: won't be hired. Even more, you won't be authorized to
Speaker 5: go into the building because security people from the embassy
Speaker 5: would not let someone in that their identity is not certain.
Speaker 5: So it means very concrete stuff you know, for day
Speaker 5: to day life from congol citizen and this situation has
Speaker 5: been going on for for the years. It also means
Speaker 5: a lot of consequences for the government. How do you
Speaker 5: live itacks, How do you know who owns which house?
Speaker 5: How do you send the sign to someone who are
Speaker 5: a spedding ticket to someone who's done some stuff dangerous
Speaker 5: on the road. It's impossible if you do not know
Speaker 5: the identity of the population. And that's been the situation
Speaker 5: for the last forty years.
Speaker 2: So that gets to the opportunity then that an ID
Speaker 2: system could present. And then this additional layer of biometric
Speaker 2: databases which you were mentioning they're expensive. We talked about
Speaker 2: how Congo is one of the poorest countries in the world.
Speaker 2: What was the plan here, What was it that was
Speaker 2: being pitched?
Speaker 5: What was being pitched the time is that essentially an
Speaker 5: ID system costs a lot of money and supposibly the
Speaker 5: ideas for FORI it to be very well spread among
Speaker 5: the population. It needs to be cheap because as you say,
Speaker 5: Congo is one of the ten poorest country in the world.
Speaker 5: You need to have incentive for people to register and
Speaker 5: so on. That the idea at first by this Belgian
Speaker 5: company called Semlex, where the time approached former ARC President
Speaker 5: Joseph Cabina. The idea was that a very expensive passport
Speaker 5: one hundred and eighty five dollars aimed to the Congolese elite,
Speaker 5: to the elite that's still traveling on a monthly basis
Speaker 5: essentially that needs passport over and over the years, will
Speaker 5: pay for the expensive ID project for normal let's say
Speaker 5: congole Is citizens. That was being pitched in early twenty fourteen,
Speaker 5: and that's what tried to develop around like the next month,
Speaker 5: where two contracts essentially made their way through the administrative
Speaker 5: system of Congolme State in Peril. One was for the
Speaker 5: ID card, one was for the passport. But in the
Speaker 5: end it's only the passport contract that went further that
Speaker 5: was actually the passport were created and were delivered to
Speaker 5: the congol citizen. And not to mention that deal, the
Speaker 5: passport deal is currently investigated by the prosecutor in Belgium
Speaker 5: over corruption allegation.
Speaker 4: So then what went wrong?
Speaker 6: What went wrong is.
Speaker 5: Essentially, according to two sources that were very familiar with
Speaker 5: this deal, is like the money intended to be used
Speaker 5: to finance the ID card through different financial mechanism was
Speaker 5: let's say not being rooted to that purposes and being
Speaker 5: re rooted to people close to the Kabila family within different.
Speaker 6: Ways, let's say. And one of that way that we
Speaker 6: uncovers for the first time in that story.
Speaker 5: Is the money was used to leverage a loan to
Speaker 5: finance the construction of a big shopping center called Ichnos
Speaker 5: in Lubumbashi. Bubumbashi is the second city of the R
Speaker 5: seats in the east spouts of the R s in
Speaker 5: the mining region of Katanga.
Speaker 6: It's the main city of Katanga.
Speaker 5: And this building, which is a brand new, super technological,
Speaker 5: expensive building according to our source, it was built thanks
Speaker 5: to the money from the that was originally intended to
Speaker 5: be used for the idical project.
Speaker 2: All right, stick with us, Thomas. When we come back,
Speaker 2: we'll look at how ten years on, Congo still hasn't
Speaker 2: managed to set up an ID system.
Speaker 4: We'll be right back. So welcome back.
Speaker 2: Thomas Statiez is still with us, and we're talking about
Speaker 2: his deep dive investigation into Congo's failed attempts to develop
Speaker 2: a national ID system. Thomas, thanks so much for sticking
Speaker 2: with us through this pod. So there still isn't an
Speaker 2: ID system, which you go into great detail about in
Speaker 2: your reporting. Is the government even trying to get there?
Speaker 2: Where are the plans at this point?
Speaker 6: It's interesting because it's the goal.
Speaker 5: The fact that the president announced very earlier on after
Speaker 5: being elected that he will put out an ID system
Speaker 5: is like a constant in the ten past years of
Speaker 5: history of Congo. So when Felis Tshikeedi, the current president
Speaker 5: of years, he was elected after very contestic election in
Speaker 5: twenty nineteen, he promised very early on that he will
Speaker 5: have an ID system like set up and so on,
Speaker 5: and that's what happens.
Speaker 6: Over the past four years. An attempt to again create
Speaker 6: this side the cut.
Speaker 5: System with the difficulty that we talked about previously in
Speaker 5: this podcast. The government signed one of the most expensive
Speaker 5: biometric deal in the history of Africa with the French
Speaker 5: Bender and Malian partner for one point two billion dollars
Speaker 5: and the contract again is suspected to be of a price.
Speaker 5: The Finance WATCHDOB of Congo found a lot of irregularities
Speaker 5: in the whole financing structure, let's say, of the program.
Speaker 5: So once again the promises to have this ideical that
Speaker 5: was made to the Congolist cities and very early on
Speaker 5: by President Shikedi is not fulfilled and we likely not
Speaker 5: be fulfilled in the next month. And what we can
Speaker 5: fear is because there were some idicals that were produced
Speaker 5: and given to a couple of Congolist VIPs, that this
Speaker 5: idical will become like an object of collection of very
Speaker 5: wealthy Congolist people. Because at the time, as far as
Speaker 5: i'm our sources go, we know there's roughly one thousand
Speaker 5: idical that were produced over this one point two billion
Speaker 5: dollar contract.
Speaker 2: Wow Tomas, when you went there, I mean, what is
Speaker 2: the reaction on the ground, especially you outline that some
Speaker 2: of the funds you founded the report were ciphoned to
Speaker 2: this new mall.
Speaker 4: What do is citizens say there?
Speaker 5: I would say, any situation is not black and white, right,
Speaker 5: there is a sense that this pattern of like misuse
Speaker 5: of money is like an ongoing situation and never ending
Speaker 5: situation in congost But I would say that people are
Speaker 5: very tired also of like this corruption scheme, but also
Speaker 5: tired of something else, tired of the whole framing of
Speaker 5: let's say corruption as an African problem. Corruption in a
Speaker 5: sense is also a problem of some of those companies
Speaker 5: that are coming and are participating in those essentially scheme.
Speaker 6: This is a two way stuff.
Speaker 5: It's not only and solely an African government problem. There's
Speaker 5: another investigation at least in France for instance, ongoing on
Speaker 5: another vendor part of a very big group for corruption
Speaker 5: allegation in Africa. So hopefully, like those the investigations, we
Speaker 5: instead the records straight, proving that it's not only an
Speaker 5: African problem, but also like due diligence and a good
Speaker 5: practices that those company needs to have when they're working
Speaker 5: in large government tendering process.
Speaker 2: And as you mentioned, Congolese people are still waiting as
Speaker 2: this procect carries on. Tomas, thank you so much for
Speaker 2: joining us. It's a really fascinating report, really well done
Speaker 2: by you and the team, and we want to make
Speaker 2: sure everybody knows that you can read his investigation on
Speaker 2: Bloomberg right now and we are going to put a link.
Speaker 4: In the show notes. Thank you so much to us.
Speaker 6: Thank you, Jennifer.
Speaker 2: And as Tamas noted, ID systems in much of the
Speaker 2: world are considered a basic right as citizens.
Speaker 4: Without it, as the World Bank says, people.
Speaker 2: Can be left feeling like foreigners in their own country.
Speaker 2: As we approach the UN's twenty thirty Sustainable Development Goal target.
Speaker 4: We'll watch to see what progress is actually.
Speaker 2: Being made in granting people the ability to obtain a
Speaker 2: legal identity and how that then affects their countries and
Speaker 2: their public officials. This program was produced by Adrian Bradley.
Speaker 2: Don't forget to follow and review this podcast wherever you
Speaker 2: usually get your podcasts. I'm Jennifer Zabasaja. Thanks as always
Speaker 2: for listening