The trust infrastructure for 1.4 billion Africans.
One place for every African institution to verify who — and what — it is dealing with: a universal identity substrate, the marketplace that runs on it, the data products priced to trust, and the open standards beneath. No raw biometric data is ever stored.
- Biometrics never leave the device
- Data held in-jurisdiction
- Holder-controlled credentials
The opportunity
Africa is building its identity layer now.
Half a billion people without verifiable identity, and a continental single market that needs to trust who it trades with. The institutions that verify against one trusted anchor will define the next decade of African finance, mobility, and trade.
- ~500M
- people in Sub-Saharan Africa without official proof of identity
- World Bank ID4D
- 1.4B
- people inside the African Continental Free Trade Area
- AfCFTA Secretariat
- $3.4T
- combined GDP across the AfCFTA single market
- World Bank
- 54
- African states the continental trade area spans
- AfCFTA Secretariat
How Civic Anchor is built
Raw biometrics never stored
Verification runs on a privacy-preserving template bound to the holder’s device. No raw biometric data lives on our infrastructure — anywhere, in any jurisdiction.
Credentials the holder carries
Identity, residency, and reputation are portable verifiable credentials the subject controls — presentable, revocable, and recognised across institutions and borders.
Built jurisdiction by jurisdiction
Each country operates under its own data-protection framework and regulator. The substrate is continental; the compliance is local — by construction, not by exception.
The platform
Four reinforcing layers.
Each layer earns its own revenue, and each makes the one above it harder to dislodge. Built bottom-up — identity first, standards last.
- 01
Identity substrate
A universal anchor for verified subjects — people, businesses, assets, and skills — each cryptographically bound to a controllable decentralised identifier the subject holds.
- 02
Verification marketplace
Every institution that touches a verified subject — a bank at onboarding, a telco at SIM registration, an employer at hire, a border post at entry — verifies against the anchor per request, with the subject’s consent.
- 03
Trust-priced data
On top of the verification log sit the products institutions pay for: credit and trade-reputation signals, AML and sanctions screening, and workforce verification — priced to the trust they carry.
- 04
Standard-setting
The Foundation publishes the open reference specifications for cross-border digital identity — the documents AfCFTA, the African Union, and the regional blocs can cite and adopt royalty-free.
How it works
What a verification actually looks like.
Enrolment happens once, in person. After that, any institution can verify the same subject in seconds — with consent, and without ever touching raw biometrics.
- 1
Enrol once, in person
A licensed partner node captures a privacy-preserving template bound to the holder’s device and registers a passkey. The raw biometric never leaves the phone.
- 2
Present with consent
When an institution needs to verify, the holder approves the request on their device — sharing only the scope asked for, nothing more.
- 3
Verify in seconds
The institution receives a signed, jurisdiction-stamped response, billed per verification and written to a tamper-evident log. No documents re-collected.
Footprint
Continental by design, local by obligation.
We open one jurisdiction at a time — each with its own legal entity, regulator relationship, and data-protection commitments — sequenced from Southern Africa outward along the AfCFTA priority corridors.
South Africa
POPIA
Zimbabwe
Data Protection Act
Botswana
Data Protection Act
Southern Africa
Regional bloc
For institutions
Verify once. Recognise everywhere.
Onboard a verified subject in seconds against a credential they already carry — with their consent, billed per verification, recorded in a tamper-evident log. No document re-collection, no shared biometric database.
Banks & financial institutions
Onboard and re-verify without re-collecting documents.
Telcos
SIM-registration identity, reusable for the whole relationship.
Employers & platforms
Verified workforce identity that travels between jobs.
Government & customs
Residency, entitlement, and cross-border trader identity.
Why it compounds
A position competitors can’t simply copy.
Civic Anchor’s defensibility is stacked, not single-source. Each effect reinforces the others, and each strengthens the longer the network runs.
Network effects
Two-sided by construction: every verifier added makes the credential more useful to hold, and every holder added makes the network more valuable to verify against.
Data gravity
The verification log and reputation graph compound and cannot be re-created. History accrues to the holder, not to any one institution.
Portability
Holders carry their credentials, score, and attestations. The same portability that satisfies regulators is what makes the relationship durable.
Open standards
The specifications are published for the public interest. When the framework is cited in regulation, interoperability runs through it.
Build on the identity layer for Africa.
Whether you’re a bank, a telco, a government body, or a regional regulator — start the conversation about verifying against Civic Anchor in your market.