Bill Gates watches tennis
Bill Gates is at the centre of some wild claims doing the social media rounds. Image by Lukas Coch/AAP PHOTOS

Kenyan babies are not targets of Bill Gates plot to implant digital ID

Soofia Tariq November 7, 2024
WHAT WAS CLAIMED

Bill Gates and the Kenyan government are implanting digital IDs in babies

OUR VERDICT

False. The Kenyan Digital ID system does not involve implanting anything in babies.

AAP FACTCHECK – Bill Gates is not in cahoots with the Kenyan government to implant digital identification (ID) into babies, despite a claim being shared on social media.

The claim is based on a spurious news report that uses an unrelated 2015 Bill Gates interview relating to genetically modified organism (GMO) regulations and vaccines.

Posts on various social media platforms claim the government of Kenya, with the help of the Microsoft founder, wants to implant microchips containing digital IDs into babies after birth.

A baby is inoculated in Freetown, Sierra Leone
  Babies in Kenya are assigned a registration number but are not given implants. 

“I think there is something crook here,” New Zealand anti-vaccination activist and preacher Billy Te Kahika (whose claims AAP FactCheck has debunked in the past) says in a Facebook livestream from October 31 (12 minutes 45 seconds).

“Let’s talk about digital ID,” he says. “Let’s talk about what Bill Gates has got planned for you.”

As evidence for the claim, he then plays a clip from online South African Christian news channel LN24 from November 2023.

“The program targets the birth of new babies,” the reporter says. “So once you have your baby, before your baby leaves the hospital, you will no longer get a paper birth certificate, but then you get a digital one that is somehow implanted somewhere on somebody’s body.”

The reporter then introduces a snippet from a 2023 clip of Kenya’s President William Ruto talking about the digital ID system, known as “Maisha Namba“.

Kenyan President William Ruto speaks at a press conference
 Kenyan President William Ruto has openly discussed the country’s Maisha Namba project. 

It is immediately followed by a clip of Mr Gates in which he says: “We’re taking things that are, you know, genetically modified organisms and we’re injecting them in little kids’ arms. We just shoot them right into the vein.”

However, the clip is unrelated to the scheme. Instead, it is from a 2015 event in Brussels where he is referring to GMO regulations and comparing it to vaccine safety testing (two minutes 18 seconds).

The Maisha Namba project was launched in 2023 and works by assigning a registration number to each citizen, normally at birth, that functions as a digital ID.

The government wants to modernise the country’s ID system, but has been held up by privacy and security concerns.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which says digital IDs are an effective tool against poverty, advised the Kenyan government on the development and rollout of Maisha Namba, according to Business Daily Africa.

AAP FactCheck has previously debunked claims about Bill Gates implanting digital ID microchips in humans.

The Verdict

False – The claim is inaccurate.

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