UNECA and African experts urge civil registration to enable good governance

Data for planning and the importance of ID management were two of the intended key topics to be discussed at the Experts Group Meeting of the 6th Conference of African Ministers Responsible for Civil Registration, held recently in Addis Ababa. The meeting of ministers has been postponed until January 2023 to allow more time for the results of the experts’ meeting.

“We realize that now we are talking about ID management,” said Oliver Chinganya, director, African Centre for Statistics at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) at a press conference.

“So it’s the integrating, the strengthening of the civil registration and ID management, meaning the civil registration itself as a foundation, meaning you collect data from children born aged zero to the time somebody leaves this Earth.”

While the meetings cover both the CR and VS of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics, this sixth meeting, back in Addis Ababa a decade after the first in 2012, placed an emphasis on civil registration.

The host nation Ethiopia, the host organization the African Union and experts from UNECA and co-groups from a network of other UN agencies, African Development Bank and World Bank reflect on progress so far in civil registration and ideas for the future. They take these to ministers – all member states of the AU were in attendance – who later present the findings to their heads of state.

“It’s a governance issue,” said Chinganya, “Civil registration and vital statistics, it’s a governance issue because it talks about planning. You are only able to plan if you know the people who are being born, registered, to be able to know how many of those are going to go to school.”

Chinganya presented the need for civil registry information about a population for national planning for the quantities of medications and vaccines needed as well as school places: where, when and for how long. The data from civil registration is also a big part of the sets of goals affecting Africa: the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the AU’s Agenda 2063.

“The data that goes into informing the SDGs – SDGs about leaving no one behind and being able to plan properly – 65 percent of that data is derived from civil registration. So if we don’t get civil registration clearly and properly, it means even attaining SDGs becomes a problem because you don’t have the data.”

Chinganya states that CR will only work if it is “functional, holistic, compulsory.” COVID-19 revealed vulnerabilities in systems and created a distortion as both births and deaths went unregistered as people avoided contact with authorities.

“Can we come up with a system that is resilient and agile enough to be able to respond to this? One way to do that is to digitalize the system, which allows them [registrars] to be able to collection information without physically being there,” said Chinganya, who hopes for interoperability in systems and strong recommendations from experts for digitization and doing away with paperwork.

Chinganya also hopes for more collaboration and countries learning from one another, such as from host Ethiopia which has made “good strides” in registration.

Article Topics

Africa  |  biometrics  |  birth registration  |  civil registration  |  digital ID  |  identity management  |  UNECA  |  United Nations