Margins@35: From a US$100 idea to Africa’s most certified identity powerhouse

By any measure, Margins ID Group occupies a rare space in African business. It is the continent’s most certified and secure production facility for intelligent cards and security products. It is the first African firm to manufacture a secure national identity card on African soil. It is also the first African company to serve as a prime contractor for a national ID project anywhere on the continent.

Margins’ systems now underpin some of Ghana’s most critical national platforms, spanning identity management, border control, vehicle registration, and insurance claims. Beyond Ghana, the company has a footprint across eight countries, with operations and subsidiaries in Europe, North America, and West Africa.

Yet for Moses Kwesi Baiden Jnr., Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Margins ID Group, these achievements are not mere trophies. They are proof that Africans can build world-class, high-security, technology-intensive industries at home if belief, discipline, and patience replace doubt and shortcuts. After 35 years, Margins’ journey puts to bed the notion that complex, high-value manufacturing and digital systems cannot be done in Africa.

Certified to Compete with the World

In the highly regulated world of secure identity, trust is everything. Governments do not take chances with systems that define citizenship, control borders, protect elections, and secure financial transactions.

Speaking to senior media practitioners in Accra during Margins’ 35th-anniversary celebrations, Mr. Baiden reflected on how this reality shaped the company’s philosophy from the very beginning.

“When you come from the wrong neighbourhood, people assume you are incompetent until you prove otherwise,” he observed.

It was this mindset that made certifications non-negotiable—not as marketing badges, but as independent validation of systems, processes, and discipline. Today, Margins operates one of the most comprehensively certified secure facilities on the continent.

Margins has earned a suite of internationally recognised certifications, including ISO 27001:2022 for Information Security Management Systems, ISO 22301:2019 for Business Continuity Management Systems, ISO 20000:2018 for Service Management Systems, and Integraf certification. The company also holds Cybersecurity Establishment and Cybersecurity Service Provider certifications.

“These certifications matter because they show that you have world-class processes and systems, not just because you say so. They allow you to prove your pedigree and to run a business in a scientific, open, progressive, efficient, and effective way,” Mr. Baiden explains.

In a sector where a single weakness can compromise national security, these certifications have become Margins’ global passport, enabling it to compete credibly with long-established European and Asian firms.

More than Just a Card

To the untrained eye, identity appears deceptively simple, involving a card with a name, a photograph, and a number. Mr. Baiden is quick to dismantle that illusion. Margins has evolved from a manufacturing company into a full-scale solutions provider.

Across its solutions companies, Margins has developed 27 core competencies. For Ghana’s National Identification Authority (NIA) system alone, there are 22 distinct subsystems, all delivered by Margins and its partners.

A single secure card involves more than 36 suppliers, spanning materials, chips, inks, laminates, and security features. Margins designs the card, orchestrates the supply chain, integrates the technologies, and produces it under tightly controlled conditions.

Beyond production, the company designs and deploys entire ecosystems: hardware integration, stress and humidity testing, communication networks, data transfer and encryption, firewalls, cybersecurity monitoring, personalisation platforms, lifecycle management systems, inventory controls, issuance software, and cryptographic modules.

“This is not just printing. Each subsystem requires very different expertise, and all of them must work together perfectly,” Mr. Baiden insists. It is this systems thinking that has made Margins indispensable to some of Ghana’s most critical national platforms.

The Ghana Card: A Model for Africa

The Ghana Card has become Margins’ most visible product, though Mr. Baiden is careful to emphasise partnership rather than ownership.

“The NIA is our partner. We support them. We do not replace them,” he says.

The results speak for themselves. Ghana has registered about 90 percent of its adult population, placing it among the most advanced national ID systems in the developing world. In one year alone, 15.7 million people were registered, with production capacity reaching up to 250,000 cards per day.

Mr. Baiden recalls visiting remote villages and watching NIA officers work under punishing conditions. “It is not perfect,” he admits, “but it is a fantastic job.” He argues that the success of the Ghana Card lies not only in technology but in governance. Sustained over more than 13 years, the NIA partnership represents one of Ghana’s most successful public-private collaborations, built on transparency, compliance, goodwill, and national interest.

Many countries now want to replicate Ghana’s model. Delegations from across Africa regularly visit to study how identity in Ghana has been integrated into public services.

Beyond Identity: Building National Platforms

Margins’ work extends far beyond national IDs. The company has built Ghana’s Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) system, linking every registered vehicle and driver to the Ghana Card while maintaining an independent platform. This integration has transformed law enforcement and road safety.

Margins has also delivered a national health insurance claims system with a secure data warehouse to eliminate forged claims. It has built systems to identify and remove ghost names from public payrolls, awaiting deployment by the Controller and Accountant General’s Department. The company has even developed Ghana’s border control system, making it the only African company to have built such a platform locally.

Many Ghanaians carry Margins’ products without knowing it. The company manufactures Visa, Mastercard, UnionPay, and European payment cards and builds personalisation systems used by banks, either in-branch or as a managed service.

Operating Across Continents

Today, Margins operates in eight countries, with companies in Portugal, Copenhagen, Silicon Valley, and The Gambia. It is producing The Gambia’s national ID cards and finalising additional major contracts. This global presence is the result of three and a half decades of methodical expansion, strategic partnerships, and relentless reinvestment.

A Painful Lesson in Belief

Despite its achievements, Mr. Baiden recalls moments that revealed how deeply entrenched doubt about African capability can be. During the early days of Ghana’s national ID project, a government official asked:

“If we build this factory in Africa, would that not compromise security?”

The suggestion was that manufacturing in Africa itself was a security risk. “I have never forgotten that moment. It revealed a mindset,” Mr. Baiden reflects. He believes that such doubt is the real obstacle to African industrialisation.

“When soil is fertile, seeds grow naturally. When the soil is hard, nothing grows. We cannot industrialise and we cannot build wealth without building things,” he says.

From Boys’ Quarters to Boardrooms

Margins began in 1990 at the cusp of the ICT revolution. Computers were shrinking from room-sized machines into desktops and laptops. Mr. Baiden, then a law student, invested his first savings, £3,500 from holiday work in London, into a Toshiba laptop. Despite his father’s hopes that he become a lawyer, he wanted to be a businessman.

He started Margins in a boys’ quarters at Ringway Estates with just $100, convinced his brother to lend him a binder and laminator, and promised he would make a million dollars in 36 months. Within two years, Margins had sold over 1,000 laminators and binders. By age 27, the company was making millions from consumables, supported by an early obsession with customer service.

Even in the early 1990s, Margins ran a fully networked office with inventory, invoicing, and warehouse management systems—early forms of what would later be called CRM.

From Printing to Identity

As Margins grew, clients asked for services rather than machines. This led to Print Solutions and eventually ID card production. Identity printing required new knowledge: substrates, inks, lamination films, and security features.

Mentorship was critical. Peter Blom, a Danish partner, played an instrumental role, while Swiss and Korean mentors introduced Mr. Baiden to global systems thinking and manufacturing expertise. By 1997, Margins was laminating passports. When Ghana adopted hot-melt laminated passports without local expertise, Baiden flew to Korea, worked overnight with engineers, returned, and demonstrated a working solution—winning the contract.

From there, Margins’ evolution was constant: bank cards, voter IDs, military and police IDs, airport systems, and, eventually, national identity platforms.

A Vision for Africa

Mr. Baiden recognized early on that identity would be central to Africa’s future. With a projected population of 1.4 billion, the continent needs secure, integrated systems to connect people to services. Partnerships with Danish and Brazilian firms led to Margins ID Systems Limited, building high-tech manufacturing and software capacity in Africa without shortcuts.

“A factory is not just machines. It is knowledge, systems, and a market,”Mr. Baiden insists

No Shortcuts, Just Work

After 35 years, Mr. Baiden describes the the cost of success thus: 12–14 hours a day of relentless work. Much of Margins’ software is written in Ghana, by Ghanaian engineers, working alongside global talent.

For him, Margins’ journey is not just a corporate success story; it is a challenge to a nation and a continent to believe in its own capacity. “If we put our minds to it,” he says, “everything is possible.”

Impact on Governance and Security

Chairman of the NIA Board, Moses Afetsi Positive, hAS highlighted Margins’ role in addressing one of Ghana’s most persistent governance challenges: waste. By providing a single, trusted source of identity, the Ghana Card has made it increasingly difficult for ghost names to survive in payrolls, databases, and benefit schemes. It has also enhanced cyber fraud prevention, making reliable identity the first line of defence in a digital economy.

The Executive Secretary of the NIA, Wisdom Yayra Koku Deku, recalls early operational challenges, noting that without Margins’ systems, the Authority might not have survived. Today, under a revised legal framework, the Ghana Card will integrate more deeply into Ghana’s security architecture, enabling law enforcement agencies to access defined information for crime prevention and investigations, within legal safeguards.

Subsidiaries and Core Offerings

Margins operates four subsidiaries: Margins ID Systems Applications LTD, Intelligent Card Production Systems (ICPS), and Identity Management System (IMS I & II). Together, they enable Margins to design, deploy, and manage entire identity ecosystems—covering national IDs, payment cards, border control, vehicle registration, health insurance, and more.

It is evident that Margins ID Group is not just a success story, it is a blueprint for African industrial and technological capability. From US$100 in a boys’ quarters to a multinational, certified powerhouse, the company demonstrates that Africa can innovate, manufacture, and lead in high-security, high-tech industries.

Its journey proves that belief, patience, and disciplined execution are more powerful than doubt and shortcuts. After 35 years, Margins ID Group stands as living proof: African ingenuity, when nurtured and trusted, can meet global standards and shape the continent’s future.

 

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