Tanzania, April 24 -- By the end of last month, there were 58,330 uncollected passports at various Immigration offices across Kenya, and the government was begging fellows to pick them up.

That was on the back of over 130,000 identity cards and 40,000 driver's licences uncollected at Huduma centres. It is not a Kenyan problem. It's an African one.

Ugandan authorities just announced they were going to burn 50,000 uncollected passports. Last year, the country had nearly three million uncollected IDs. Nigeria closed last year with over 112,351 uncollected passport booklets, and 800,000 IDs that hadn't been picked up by applicants. That is in a country where nearly 100 million people lack formal IDs. South Africa, with a third of Nigeria's ...