SUBiango/sierrafy

Sierra Leone has 93% NIN coverage. What it doesn't have is a developer-friendly way to use it. Sierrafy is an open-source SDK that gives any developer a clean API to verify National Identification Numbers and ID documents — self-hostable, offline-capable, free to use. # Sierrafy **Open-source NIN verification SDK for Sierra Leone.** Sierra Leone has 93% NIN coverage. What it doesn't have is a developer-friendly way to use it. Sierrafy is an open-source SDK that gives any developer a clean API to verify National Identification Numbers and ID documents — self-hostable, offline-capable, free to use. > **Status: Phase 1 · in development.** This repository currently contains the project landing page and the technical architecture specification. The SDK itself is not built yet — follow or watch the repo for progress. ## The problem Sierra Leone reached 93% NIN registration coverage in 2025, and a NIN is now legally required to open a bank account, get a SIM, enrol in school, or access most services. NCRA has built the national ID foundation; what's still missing is accessible, developer-friendly tooling so the wider ecosystem — startups, fintechs, and solo developers — can integrate ID verification into their products without specialised expertise. Sierrafy fills that gap with an open, self-hostable toolkit, designed to integrate with NCRA's infrastructure as a formal partnership develops (Phase 2). ## Planned architecture (Phase 1) Five verification layers, usable independently or together: 1. **NIN format validation** — structural + checksum checks 2. **Document OCR** — extract and cross-check data from the National eID Card and Passport 3. **Face matching** — selfie vs. ID portrait 4. **Fraud signal detection** — tampering, screen-recapture, duplicates 5. **NFC chip verification** — cryptographic passive authentication of the eID chip (mobile SDKs) Delivered as a self-hostable REST gateway (Docker) plus SDKs for JavaScript, Python, PHP, React Native, and Flutter. Fully offline-capable; **no biometric data is ever stored**. See the full spec: `docs/architecture/Sierrafy_Architecture_v1.1.md`. ## Contributing Contributions are welcome — see `CONTRIBUTING.md`. The roadmap and component specs live in the architecture documen …