Disability Data, Digital Identity and Social Protection: A Normative Framework for Algorithmic Eligibility, Privacy and Participation in Disability-Inclusive Welfare Systems
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.68854/mhft8c71Keywords:
disability data, digital identity, social protection, eligibility assessment, algorithmic decision-making, privacy, disability registration, data governance, Nigeria, AfricaAbstract
Governments across Africa and beyond are moving the gateways to disability support online. National disability registers, biometric identity numbers and scored eligibility assessments now decide who counts as disabled and who receives a grant, a device or a fee waiver, yet the scholarship on social protection, on digital identity and on algorithmic accountability has largely developed in separate rooms. This paper develops a normative framework for disability-inclusive social protection whose gateways are digital. It is a theoretical study. The argument is built from forty-four peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2023 and 2026 and retrieved through PubMed, Crossref and targeted web searches, each verified against its publisher record and screened for retractions, together with two primary instruments: the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and Nigeria's Discrimination Against Persons with Disabilities (Prohibition) Act 2018. The framework decomposes a digital welfare gateway into three functions, identifying, assessing and delivering, and shows that each raises a distinct normative question: who defines disability in the data, who is excluded by the assessment model, and who is left behind by the delivery channel. From the evidence on the Washington Group questions, on Robodebt and the Dutch benefits scandal, on biometric identity in Nigeria and India, and on disability-targeted transfers and assessments in Ghana, Zambia, Somalia, Bangladesh and Vietnam, the paper derives eight propositions. The central claims are that digitisation shifts the burden of proof onto disabled people while making decision rules harder to see, that disability data carry privacy risks of a different order because they reveal health, and that participation of disabled people and their organisations in system design is the only mechanism that addresses all three problems at once. The paper closes with recommendations for social-protection ministries, national disability commissions, data protection authorities, identity agencies, organisations of persons with disabilities and researchers, with Nigeria as the anchoring case.
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