UNICEF seeks partner to expand birth registration, legal identity in Tanzania

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has launched an expression of interest call to select a national non-governmental organization (NGO) in Tanzania that will support the country in expanding birth registration and legal identity services, specifically for children and youth aged 17 and below.

According to a recent announcement, interested candidates have up to July 3 to bid for the project that is part of the EU-funded BRIDGE-Tanzania initiative. It is slated to run from August 1, 2026 to August 31, 2027.

With an indicative budget of $330,000, the idea is to implement activities that focus on “social and behaviour change communication, community sensitization, youth-led awareness, caregiver engagement and district-level coordination,” with the aim of improving registration figures.

Tanzania is in the process of advancing its digital public infrastructure (DPI) implementation and one of the focus areas is improving birth registration which is the foundation of legal identity.

As stated in a 2025 World Bank digital transformation whitepaper, birth registration is not just a standalone administrative activity but a “critical upstream foundation” for building secure and high-assurance DPI.

Tanzania used to be among the Sub Saharan African nations with low birth registration due to several factors including prohibitive costs and a huge awareness gap, but recent government-led reforms including the putting in place of a platform dubbed Simplified Birth Registration System have changed the dynamic with the number of registration for under-fives substantially increasing to between 61-76 percent in the last five years. UNICEF has played a critical role in these reforms since establishing a partnership with the government on this subject since 2012.

The country earlier this year announced plans to introduce a bill on infant biometric registration in parliament, after it had conducted a pilot in 2025 with UNICEF support.

The UN agency is engaged in several birth registration and identity support projects round the world, as countries race towards meeting the SDG 16.9 target of universal legal identity for all, including birth registration by 2030.

Other countries like Ghana are also working to expand identity services to children as part of national efforts to improve legal identity converge.

Through the year-long initiative, Tanzanian officials hope to improve the rate of birth registration across selected regions and strongly advance towards universal birth registration coverage, a feat which other African countries like Cabo Verde are already achieving. The move is also expected to expand access to identity which the country is integrating to facilitate things like student loans and other services

The project targets ten of Tanzania’s districts in the regions of Tanga, Mwanza and Dar es Salaam.

UNICEF says it is looking for an NGO that that has experience in community work related to birth registration and identity, and must demonstrate specific competence in using local languages for outreach, community mobilization, child protection programming, youth-led initiatives, collaboration with local leaders and youth bodies, parent and caregiver management, and social and behaviour change communication.

Article Topics

Africa  |  birth registration  |  legal identity  |  procurement  |  SDG 16.9  |  Tanzania  |  UNICEF