In a significant move to strengthen agricultural governance and streamline public service delivery, the National Civil Registration Authority (NCRA) has partnered with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (MAFS) to digitally integrate the National Farmer Registry with Sierra Leone’s Biometric National ID System, using the National Identification Number (NIN) as a unique identifier for every registered farmer.
The initiative, designed to bolster the Government’s Feed Salone flagship program, will ensure that all farmers in the country are accurately identified and recorded eliminating duplication, fraud, and data inconsistencies that have hindered past agricultural efforts.
The strategy was formally discussed during a high-level meeting at the NCRA headquarters in Freetown. The session brought together key actors, including officials from the Food Systems Resilience Project (FSRP), the Ministry of Communications, Technology and Innovation (MoCTI), and the project’s implementing technology partner, Tiwai Memory Masters.
Participants focused on how the integration of the NIN into the digital farmer registry would enhance transparency and efficiency in identifying genuine farmers, making government support more effective and accountable. The integration aligns with Sierra Leone’s National Civil Registration Act of 2016 and the 2022 Parliamentary Ratification, which mandate the use of the NIN as a central identifier across public services. It also supports President Julius Maada Bio’s digital transformation agenda, which prioritizes data-driven service delivery and governance reform.
The integration of the NIN with the Farmer Registry is not just a technical upgrade it’s a fundamental shift in how we identify, support, and empower our farmers, said Mohamed Mubashir Massaquoi, Director General of the NCRA, this is a critical enabler for the success of the Feed Salone program, and the NCRA is fully committed to making it work.
Officials from FSRP and MAFS, including Dr. Kepri, Project Coordinator of FSRP, and Dominic Bao, Head of ICT at MAFS, acknowledged long-standing issues caused by fragmented, unreliable, and duplicated data in past agriculture initiatives. They affirmed that the new integrated Farmer Registry will become the centralized platform for all digital agriculture services, including e-extension tools, subsidy programs, and agri-tech solutions.
To ensure security and efficiency, the government is also considering hosting the Farmer Registry on NCRA’s Tier 3 Data Centre, which already manages Sierra Leone’s civil registration and national ID infrastructure, infrastructure sharing is critical, said Dr. Sankoh, Director of Technology at MoCTI, The NCRA has led by example in establishing reliable digital systems, and it’s time more agencies align for greater synergy.”
To advance the initiative, DG Massaquoi announced the creation of a Joint Technical Implementation Team made up of ICT experts from the NCRA, MAFS, MoCTI, and Tiwai Memory Masters. This team will lead the design, rollout, and long-term management of the NIN-Farmer Linkage Project.
The integration of the NIN into the Farmer Registry is expected to deliver multiple benefits Eliminate data duplication and fraudulent entries Improve targeting of government subsidies and services Enable interoperability between agriculture and identity systems Lay the groundwork for future smart agriculture platforms By embedding Digital ID at the heart of agricultural administration, Sierra Leone is taking a bold step toward creating a transparent, efficient, and inclusive public service framework.
The NCRA reaffirmed its commitment to providing nationwide civil registration, vital statistics, and ID services, as part of a broader effort to modernize governance and deliver meaningful impact to all citizens starting with the farmers who feed the nation.
Copy right –Printed in the Expo Times News on Friday, May 23th, 2025 (ExpoTimes News – Expo Media Group (expomediasl.com)
