Business and Technology Reporter in Nairobi, Kenya
Nation Media Group
Identification documents that bear the coats-of-arms of East African countries are the most susceptible to online forgery and imitation for fraudulent purposes.
While document fraud is increasing across the globe and the continent, with the surge in online businesses, the rate of faking or imitating identification documents is particularly alarming in East Africa.
Last year, nearly 80 percent of online identity fraud attempts detected by identity verification firm Smile Identity (Smile ID) in East Africa were document fraud type, most of which were cases of imitation, reflecting a higher targeting of the region’s IDs by fraudsters.
Fraudsters attempt to use fraudulent identification documents for onboarding into digital businesses such as digital lenders, exchanges, ride-hailing, e-commerce, dating, among others with the intention of swindling other users or the companies.
Smile ID, which does identity verification for various digital companies across Africa, recorded a much higher rejection rate of customers in East Africa than anywhere else on the continent. Customers are rejected for various reasons, but mostly due to attempted fraud, especially with documents.
Rejection rate in East African countries was 27 percent, while in Central and West Africa, it was 22 percent, and in Southern Africa only 21 percent of newly onboarding customers were rejected.
“Rejection rates in the mid-20s is pretty high for onboarding. We would typically see something like 10 to 15 percent rejection rate on average,” Smile ID CEO Mark Straub told The EastAfrican.
“But, in East Africa, and specifically in the countries where documents are the primary method of onboarding, we see rejection rates that are north of 25 percent. That means that for every 100 people signing up for a lending app (for example), only 70 to 75 percent of them are actually getting through.”
In the region, nearly every country uses documents as the primary method of identification as they are yet to roll out digital identification methods that integrate biometrics with traditional documentation.
A high rejection rate, Mr Straub argues, is not just a frustration for customers, but also for the online businesses which lose potential clientele after spending money on customer acquisition.
Smile ID notes that rejection rates, and indeed fraud attempts, are much lower in the parts of the globe and the continent where there is smart or digital ID systems rather than the traditional “green book” identification systems.
In African countries with smart IDs, such as Nigeria and South Africa, document fraud rates were generally lower than 10 percent, while in countries with traditional identity documents, it was as high as 34 percent.
“Green books, historically vulnerable due to weak security features, had Africa’s highest fraud rate in 2023 at 34 percent,” the company noted in its 2025 Fraud report.
Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania are all currently working towards rolling out digital identification systems, but none is yet to make any concrete steps to that effect, forcing businesses to rely on traditional IDs for verification of their customers which is much harder and slower.
“When you have modern infrastructure, it can speed everything up. That means people getting access to financial services, digital credit can be faster,” Mr Straub said.
“Digital infrastructure is still infrastructure, and it’s just as important especially in the digital age when the rest of the world, and Africa, is rapidly advancing. Kenya, as the regional leader, should be at the forefront of this.”
This is not the first time East Africa is leading in document fraud. In 2023, the region recorded some the highest rates of document fraud incidents on the continent with Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda recording at least 25 percent of documents used for online onboarding being fake.
