Ghana’s Minister of Communications and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, has announced that SIM cards that have been linked to ID cards but not undergone the second phase of registration will be blocked from accessing data services from 20 November and completely deactivated on 30 November. The Minister added an announcement will be made regarding measures to accommodate those people who genuinely do not have Ghana Cards, once the ongoing consultations have been completed.
According to the Ministry, approximately 30 million SIM cards had been linked to Ghana Cards as of 9 November, while 20.9 million subscribers had completed the registration process by capturing their biometric data. Highlighting that there had been a noticeable decline in SIM-related fraud since the commencement of the re-registration exercise in November 2021, the authorities noted some customers had been unable to complete the bio capture stage as they had used other people’s ID cards without the owners’ consent or knowledge. ‘Their inability to complete phase two attests to the robustness of the authentication process designed into the SIM registration architecture,’ the Minister stated.