Malawi's child ID scheme raises privacy concerns

In Malawi, a government programme is assigning national identity cards to children. For many families, the cards promise access to health services, school enrolment, and social protection. For others, they raise a harder question: what happens when the state knows exactly where a child with albinism lives?

Reuters reported on the rollout and the privacy concerns it has prompted among civil society groups. The programme is part of a broader push across Sub-Saharan Africa to extend formal identification to minors, according to the report. Supporters say it gives children a legal existence the state can protect. Critics say the same data, if poorly secured or misused, can make a child a target.

The specific risk for children with albinism

Malawi has one of the highest rates of albinism in the world, according to the United Nations. It also has a documented history of attacks on people with albinism, driven by demand for body parts used in ritual practices. Reuters noted that advocates working with vulnerable communities have raised concerns about how sensitive identity data will be stored, who can access it, and whether safeguards exist for children at elevated risk of harm.

The organisation Under the Same Sun has previously reported that children with albinism in the region are disproportionately targeted, and that their visibility in any formal registry — without strong data protections — can increase rather than reduce their exposure to danger.

The Reuters report did not specify whether the Malawian government has introduced any tiered privacy protections for children in high-risk categories. A spokesperson for the programme was not quoted addressing that question directly.

What the data question involves

At the centre of the concern is a structural tension that identity programmes in several countries have encountered: a database built to protect children can, under different conditions, be used to locate them. Reuters noted that civil society organisations have called for clearer legal frameworks governing who holds the data, how long it is retained, and under what circumstances it can be shared with third parties.

Malawi's National Registration Bureau has not, according to the report, published a child-specific data protection policy. The broader national identification system has faced scrutiny before over security gaps, Reuters noted.

For the albinism community, the issue is not theoretical. Families in rural areas have historically kept children with albinism out of public records — and sometimes out of school — as an informal form of protection. A compulsory ID scheme changes that calculus.

The reported concerns sit at an intersection that policymakers rarely address directly: the right to legal identity and the right to safety do not always point in the same direction. For children with albinism in Malawi, the distance between those two rights is measured in very specific terms.