About Huduma Namba

The registration of births and deaths has been carried out in Kenya since 1907. This exercise is undertaken under the Registration of Persons Act, CAP 107, Laws of Kenya, besides other legislations on management of Citizens and Aliens.

In 2005, the Government of Kenya (GoK) initiated the registration of persons in the country using a harmonized approach to address duplication of efforts and to cut costs in the registration processes. This exercise has been managed and coordinated by the Integrated Population Registration System (IPRIS).

To improve on the progress made by IPRIS, the Government, through Executive Order No. 1 of (2018), established the National Integrated Identity Management System (NIIMS) programme which aims to create and manage a central master population database, that will be the authentic ‘single source of truth’ on a person’s identity. The database will contain information of all Kenyan citizen and foreign nationals residing in Kenya. The programme has been code-named Huduma Namba

This will lead to coordinated registration of person and address the issue of different institutions capturing different data parameters of the same individual, unnecessary duplication and bring about inefficiency in the utilization of public resources.

It will also ensure that there is a single identity document for persons and access to national identification data, in addition to reducing time consumed in registration of persons it will also bring down costs as the process is paper-less

Why NIIMS /Huduma Namba

A comprehensive national register of all persons in the country is critical for national development. The database informs planning for equitable resource allocation necessary for national development initiatives and key decision making. Among these; are Big Four Agenda which include food security, affordable housing, manufacturing, and affordable healthcare. Coordinated registration eliminates duplication and saves the country both financial and human resources among others

Further, stakeholders in public and private sector undertaking registration need to be informed by an authentic national frame so that they add information on specific field of interest. This is the single source of truth that NIIMS aims at establishing.