Episode 128 - GluuFederation/identerati-office-hours GitHub Wiki
Title:
- Host: Mike Schwartz, Founder/CEO Gluu
- Guest: Andrew Amstrong Musoke, Senior Research Engineer, Carnegie Mellon University Africa in Kigali, Rwanda
- Guest: Afsanat Ineza, Student, Carnegie Mellon University Africa in Kigali, Rwanda
- Guest: Elizabeth Garber, OIDF Director Marketing / Strategy
Channels
Description
While digital identity systems are gaining ground across Africa, true adoption requires more than just infrastructure—it demands practical use cases and local capacity to build and sustain them. The Digital ID Hackathon Africa is a pan-African initiative that engaged university students to co-create meaningful, youth-led identity solutions tackling real-world challenges like social protection and service access. The program isn’t just about prototypes and awards—it’s about breaking cycles of vendor lock-in and advancing inclusive, locally-rooted identity ecosystems. In this episode, we’ll explore the motivations behind the hackathon, how it culminated at ID4Africa 2025, and why investing in homegrown talent is key to scaling digital ID that truly works for Africa.
Homework
- Debut presentation at ID4Africa: https://youtu.be/UL93gQl5k1I?t=7332
- Hackathon and Upanzi website: https://www.africa.engineering.cmu.edu/research/upanzi/id-hackathon.html
- Detailed presentation of the hackathon: https://youtu.be/ks416SWCz_Y?t=91
- BioMetric Daily Hackathon Article
Takeaways
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⚡ We need more hackathons! It's a great way to get students exposure to the technologies and overcome the activation energy needed to dive into some hard problems.
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⚡ In a worst case scenario, extortion by commercial software vendors and anemic innovation happens. For digital identity infrastructure, with high switching costs, and long production lifetimes (15+ years), this risk is especially salient. As a development methodology, open source projects more consistently deliver innovation in the long term. But how to fund these projects is unresolved. Underinvestment can lead to security issues (like Heartbleed) or slow innovation.
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⚡ Mike asserts there is a mismatch between countries that use Digital Public Goods, and the funding models of open source projects that produce them. Donor funded open source projects are great, as long as donors donate. However, only the biggest projects can attract donor funding, and even some of them have trouble doing so consistently. It would be better if donors catalyze a project, but a sustainable funding model emerges--and that must be related to the value the software delivers to end users. The Digital Public Goods Registry should be a catalog countries order from with transparent pricing, not a list of free stuff.
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⚡ Most of the hackathons tend to focus on first party challenges, like a gov't issuing credentials to be used at a gov't website or to receive gov't benefits. But a signifiant challenge in identity is trust--how can relying parties know which credentials they can rely on to enable a person to transact, whether that's open a bank account, or get hired at a private company. RP adoption drives ROI for identity projects.