Dangote Cement clocks in with iris technology

Dangote Cement is keeping an eye on staff arrival and attendance with an iris recognition system to keep tabs on its 30,000 employees located in five countries in Africa. Dangote's operations in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Republic of Congo will use the iris-ID system.

The software is contactless and simply uses the coloured part of the eye surrounding the pupil to identify staff. According to Preasanna Kumar Burri, Dangote Group chief information officer, the traditional time clocks and fingerprint ID system the group was using had become inaccurate and slow to process. The iris recognition biometric solution was initially tested in Dangote's Mugher plant in Ethiopia in 2018.

"Anytime an employee moves in and out of the work site, they have to use the iris ID system. So it's not just the clock-in and last strike-out. So anytime an employee moves from the access gate, they need to authenticate themselves. Anytime an employee can walk up to the iris ID terminal and just stay a few seconds, the authentication is done. It's very fast."

Burri said the iris ID software has been integrated with Dangote's payment software and it can be used in multiple locations. The system can also store up to a million transactions on each unit.