The Minister for Communications, Digital Technology and Innovation, Samuel Nartey George, has announced that Ghana will soon conduct its first fully biometric SIM registration to address flaws in the current system and curb mobile money fraud and identity theft.
Speaking at a media engagement on Tuesday, March 17, the Minister stressed that the exercise is not a re-registration but an entirely new registration system.
“A re-registration means you are re-registering something that already exists. That is not what we are doing; the systems are completely different,” he said.
He criticised the 2021–2023 SIM registration exercise for lacking biometric verification and said the new system will address all previous shortcomings.
“The critical thing I complained about was the lack of biometric verification. So basically, what I am doing today is walking the talk that we spoke about in opposition,” he stated.
The Minister revealed that flawed data from the previous exercise has already caused real-world problems, including innocent citizens being implicated in crimes due to cloned SIMs.
“There have been instances where law enforcement has apprehended the wrong person leading investigators to an innocent citizen,” he explained.
He warned that simply transferring old data without cleansing would not solve the problem.
“Migrating it into a new system without proper cleansing doesn’t solve the problem; it simply transfers the flaws,” he said.
The upcoming registration is also designed to make mobile money fraud costly and prohibitive. “When his Ghana Card is blocked, he loses access to every government service. So the cost to MoMo fraud is being raised to the level that it will be prohibitive,” he added.
Sam George emphasised that the focus is on consumer protection and integrity, not procurement. “A battle over procurement contracts defined the last registration. That is not our interest today. If we get this right, this will be the final registration we need,” he stated.
