How to obtain a public trust identity for a company in Rwanda

A Rwanda-registered organization cannot currently complete Azure Artifact Signing Public Trust identity validation because Rwanda is not among the supported organization locations.

Microsoft currently limits Public Trust organization validation to the United States, Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, and Israel.^1^ Creating the Artifact Signing account in a supported Azure region does not change the organization’s eligibility; resource region and identity-validation geography are separate requirements.

Available alternatives

For publicly distributing the Windows application:

1. Obtain an OV code-signing certificate from another certificate authority that accepts and can validate Rwanda-registered organizations. Microsoft lists an OV certificate from a CA as an alternative production-signing option.^2^
2. Distribute through Microsoft Store, where the Store signs an accepted submission. This option is specifically listed for MSIX distribution.^2^
3. Use Artifact Signing Private Trust only for controlled environments. Private Trust has no equivalent geographic restriction, but its CA hierarchy is not trusted by default in Windows or public root programs. It is intended for environments where trust is explicitly configured, such as internal application-control scenarios—not unrestricted public downloads.^3^
4. Use Public Trust Test only for development/testing. Its certificates are not publicly trusted and should not be used for production distribution.^3^

A self-signed certificate is likewise suitable only where recipients manually trust the certificate, not for general public distribution.

Checking for future availability

Before attempting onboarding again, check the current Prerequisites section of the Artifact Signing quickstart. If Rwanda is still absent from the country/region selector, the Artifact Signing FAQ directs customers to the supported-country prerequisites; identity validation cannot be completed by Azure CLI as a workaround.^4^

Azure Support can confirm roadmap or onboarding changes, but it cannot bypass the published geographic eligibility requirement.

References

1. Quickstart: Set up Artifact Signing
2. Sign an MSIX package
3. Artifact Signing trust models
4. Artifact Signing FAQ