In August 2021, Seychelles decided to accelerate its digital transformation for an efficient digital economy. The platform is one of the results of the strategy implemented in that regard.

Seychelles inaugurated, last Monday, "SeyID," its national digital identity platform. According to Vice President Ahmed Afif (photo), the new platform is one of the initiatives carried out by the Department of Information and Communication Technology (DICT) to accelerate the country's digital transformation.

"Having a digital ID through the SeyID platform will not only be a means of proving your identity digitally or accessing digital public or private services. It will also allow you to digitally sign documents, another growing requirement when transacting digitally. Through this platform, digital signing will be far much easier to do compared to what is the case presently,” he said.  

According to the World Bank, in 2020, Seychelles’s GDP dropped to a negative 13.5%, due to the coronavirus pandemic, which disrupted economic activities. In February 2021, to diversify and expand its economy, the country announced plans to accelerate its digital transformation. SeyID is one of the results of that plan.

The platform is developed by WISeKey International Holding, a Swiss cybersecurity firm. It will give Seychellois the tools they need to prove their identity online, but it will also facilitate access to many public and private services that choose to integrate with the SeyID platform thanks to interconnecting application programming interfaces (APIs).

The SeyID app is already available on the Play Store. According to Finance Minister Naadir Hassan, “the SeyID platform is based on WISeKey’s WISeID platform which guarantees a high level of Digital Identity and online security.”

It “will be accessible through both web-based and mobile-based applications and both are supported with strong authentication techniques. This is to ensure the security of the SeyID platform users,” he added.

Samira Njoya