In a major step toward improving agricultural data systems in Sierra Leone in line with the Feed Salone flagship project of His Excellency President Julius Maada Bio, the Director General of the National Civil Registration Authority (NCRA) welcomed officials from the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (MAFS), the Food Systems Resilience Project (FSRP), Ministry of Communications, Technology and Innovation (MoCTI) and project implementation vendor/firm (Tiwai Memory Masters) to discuss the development and integration of the National Digital Farmer Registry with the NCRA’s Biometrics Digital ID, and National Identification Number (NIN) system.

The meeting centered on leveraging the NCRA’s NIN database to ensure that each farmer’s record is unique, reliable, and verifiable. Through this integration of the NCRA’s ID system with the Farmer Registry, the Ministry of Agriculture’s Digital Farmer Registry System will authenticate and verify farmers identities using the NIN, eliminating duplications and ensuring accurate registration. This initiative aligns with the Government of Sierra Leone’s digital transformation agenda, the National Civil Registration Act of 2016, and the 2022 Parliamentary Ratification, which mandate the use of the NIN as a unique identifier for accessing and delivering government services without discrimination.

The integration addresses longstanding challenges of fragmented and inconsistent farmer data faced by MAFS and its donor partners. “Over the years, multiple efforts to compile farmer records lacked consistency sand uniqueness,” noted Dr. Kepri, Project Coordinator for FSRP, and Mr. Dominic Bao, Head of ICT at MAFS. The upcoming Farmer Registry is set to serve as the foundational database for all digital agriculture systems, e-extension services, and other agtech platforms under MAFS.

Discussions also explored the possibility of hosting the Farmer Registry and other agriculture-related digital systems, platforms, and services at the NCRA’s tier 3 Data Centre to enhance security, local ownership of farmers data and for interoperability. Dr. Sankoh, Director of Technology at MoCTI noted the need for infrastructure sharing amongst MDA, a drive the NCRA has started with its ID and Data Center infrastructure, in order to complement the country’s Digital Transformation and eGovernment drives.

The DG of NCRA – Mr. Mohamed Mubashir MASSAQUOI expressed NCRA’s commitment and full support in making the national ID services and infrastructure accessible to individuals, MDAs, and private sector to improve their operations and service delivery – MAFS is not an exception particularly in supporting His Excellency’s Feed Salone Flagship project which is of critical importance to the Director General. He noted that, “The NCRA is fully committed to supporting MAFS on this project to ensuring its success, through our institution’s efforts in providing all necessary tools to reducing duplication, wastage and to providing accountability across the sector.” The DG immediately constituted a technical team from both the NCRA ICT Directorate, MAFS, MoCTI, and Tiwai Memory Masters to discuss and advise on best way forward for implementation of the NIN-Farmer Linkage project.

Over the years, the NCRA has set up a robust Civil Registration and National ID infrastructure including the establishment of Tier 3 data center that houses the country’s civil registration and ID Systems, with capacity to host or co-host other institutions digital systems in the country.

This collaboration marks an important step in building a unified, secure, and reliable digital system for managing farmer data across Sierra Leone with Digital ID at the center. The NCRA remains committed to serving the people of Sierra Leone with CRVS and ID Services across the country.