Estonia showed that Leon Schreiber is the minister of good intentions
Daily Maverick was invited to Estonia as a guest of the minister of foreign affairs to attend the African Business Forum and 11th annual e-Governance Conference — and finally have a chat with Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber.
Something Anastasiia Kapranova from the Ukraine delegation said when we spoke can't leave my mind: 'We had to shift from peacetime to wartime solutions, but having those technologies is not only about fighting the war, it's also about strengthening national resilience.'
Resilience. That's a word Minister Leon Schreiber also uses — and it's what he says he's trying to build at Home Affairs.
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He's right to see the opportunity. Estonia — the country we're here to learn from — digitised out of necessity. After regaining independence in 1991, Estonia had nothing. No property, no institutions, no legacy bureaucracy.
'It was absolutely zero,' explains Taavi Linnamäe, founder of the technology consultancy Digital Nation (he was also an adviser to the former president). 'The average salary was about $30 per month.'
But that vacuum allowed space for radical experimentation. In the 1990s, the average age of a minister in Estonia was under 30. The country's first ambassadors were in their twenties.
This wasn't recklessness — it was strategic necessity. Faced with massive development gaps compared to its Scandinavian neighbours, Estonia realised it needed 'shortcuts' and had to 'run faster'. The young leadership understood they needed 'different kinds of thinking' and were willing to trust even if mistakes were made.
The private sector drove much of the innovation, from e-banking to pushing the government toward digital IDs. Crucially, the privatisation process that sold media houses to foreign investors — primarily Scandinavians and Germans — established a strong, free and competitive media landscape vital for safeguarding against corruption.
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Age of enlightenment
At lunch, I caught a memorable line at the tail end of a conversation between two delegates: 'Estonia is what happens when you let engineers rebuild a country.'
Schreiber is inspired, and his vision is comprehensive: digital transformation as the 'clear apex priority' for Home Affairs, built on the foundation of digital ID work. The goal is to 'clean up and build the credibility of our databases and modernise those databases, make them more accessible, decentralised through things like smartphones and technology'.
He's already pointing to 'shorter-term, smaller wins' — the trusted tour operator scheme, smart ID access for naturalised citizens, expanded services through bank integration, and courier delivery options. His aim to deliver an electronic travel authorisation system before the G20 meeting in November shows admirable urgency.
He grasps the broader implications: 'Home Affairs is also the foundation of the financial system. When you open a bank account and you put your fingerprint there, it's Home Affairs that ultimately provides that data to verify who you are. And if that's not working and if that's not credible, your financial system is not credible. Your tax system is under threat.'
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This understanding led to reinvigorating the relationship with the SA Revenue Service through a new memorandum of understanding that includes the Government Printing Works and Border Management Authority — a sensible move toward the interoperability Estonia achieved.
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Minding the tech gap
Schreiber's intentions are admirable, but his grasp of the technological realities seems limited. Estonia's success wasn't just about political will — it was built on fundamental technical principles that took decades to perfect.
As the Estonian experience shows, the key fundamentals were establishing digital IDs and ensuring data interoperability — 'the data move, not the people move,' explained Linnamäe. This led to the 'once only principle', where government institutions can ask citizens for the same data only once. They focused on adopting tried and tested technologies while ensuring the 'whole society is on board using the technology'.
The gap between Schreiber's enthusiasm and technical understanding becomes apparent when compared to his Estonian counterpart.
Estonia's minister of foreign affairs, Margus Tsahkna, gets it. I finally met him at the e-Governance Conference gala dinner. He is polished, structured and technically informed.
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'Digitalisation is a powerful tool to curb corruption, strengthen democracy and increase trust,' he says. But it requires more than code. 'Effective reforms, legal frameworks, change management, inclusiveness — these must come together.'
Methodical advancement
Tsahkna speaks with the confidence of someone whose country has delivered on digital promises, and his approach was methodical.
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'In order to efficiently implement digital technologies, it has to be together with change management, effective reforms, legal frameworks, capacity building and inclusiveness,' he says.
Most tellingly, he understands the foundational requirement: 'When we talk about digitalisation, we cannot forget about cybersecurity. We need to integrate basic cybersecurity elements into all digitalisation projects already from the very start.'
Next stop, reality check
I'm in the car to the airport, reading headlines about hackers compromising Deloitte, Mediclinic and Adidas in South Africa.
The uncomfortable truth is that South Africa already has many of the tools Estonia used. We have digital infrastructure, technical expertise, and existing systems. What we lack isn't technology — it's the political stability, institutional trust and systematic approach that allowed Estonia to build from its clean slate.
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South Africa's challenge is achieving similar transformation within existing constraints. Schreiber's focus on quick wins and measurable progress is smart politics, but the Estonian experience suggests the real work lies in the unglamorous fundamentals: data integrity, system interoperability, cybersecurity, and building public trust through consistent delivery — which is not our national strength. DM
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