Yes, but when you joined steemit in 2017 it was completely different and instead of mentioned Pakistan and Uganda, there were users from the US and Europe. There is no come back to that Steemit, it went away permanently with Hive.

Why someone should share his identity card or mobile number

To avoid abuse. In my opinion it's much more effective than the fee, especially that protecting the identity is not that important in the countries that are present on the platform right now (unfortunately, you can see it when you realize how many people don't know what creative commons is and how many of them use copyrighted photos).

Generally speaking the number of active users is low because:
there is no new development happening on Steem in compare to Hive
There is no Steem media token and Hive has it

I totally agree with that. It's beyond my possibilities to change it though.

Even having couple of thousands more users from developing countries who are financially dependent on Steem because they need to buy food and pay costs for living it will not make Steem stronger.

True, but then we can push them to invest at least a bit with club5050 and other similar projects. Also, more active users bring investors from developed countries. If we will have a platform with 1000 users, nobody will be interested in investing here. Quality is important but we cannot totally ignore the quantity.