Mandatory MFA, Biometrics Make Headway in Middle East, Africa

**Executive summary:** This report outlines the accelerating deployment of national digital identity and biometric authentication systems across the Middle East and Africa—highlighting large-scale ID rollouts (e.g., UAE Pass, Morocco, South Africa, Egypt), the move toward smartphone-based and passwordless authentication, vendor and consultant perspectives on ease of adoption in greenfield markets, low current enterprise prioritization of IAM despite rising cyber-risk concerns, and the likely incorporation of AI-driven liveness and facial-recognition capabilities into future identity platforms.