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Organizing the First Conference of African Ministers Responsible for Civil Registration
13 to 14 August 2010
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Most African ministers responsible for civil registrations are expected to attend this groundbreaking meeting because they all agree that a functional civil registration system is the basis for building modern legal and public administration systems and the first step in collecting reliable vital statistics necessary for evidence-based policies for national development.

The Conference will lay the foundations for moving Africa towards a modern system of public administration.  It will help in transforming demographic and health statistics into current, universal and sustainable information management systems.  This is the best way of filling the considerable information gaps existing in many African countries.

The main factors compelling Africa’s three premier institutions into organising this conference include the following:
Many Africans come to this world and pass away without leaving a trace in any legal or statistical record. This is because the majority of African countries do not have adequate legal or statistical recording systems for births and deaths; or marriage and divorce.

Many countries do not have an official citizenship recording system or accurate record of how many children are born each day, how many people die each day; or how many marry or divorce each day. That means there is no appropriate legal and public administration system or sound and comprehensive statistical basis to plan for the development of their societies.

Systematized identification of citizens through assigning unique identifier is the modern norm of public administration. But most African countries can not create a viable national identity system due to the inadequacy of their civil registration systems.  This can even threaten their national security.

Without accurate records of the number of marriages, most countries do not have the necessary information to measure the level and type of basic needs of newly established families.

Without accurate records of the number of marriages annulled each day, there is no way of telling the number of family members, especially children and women, who are affected due to broken families, and therefore predicting the fate of these family members.

Even more importantly the age at marriage and the characteristics of the bride and the groom remain inaccessible to official statistics resulting in the lack of comprehensive input for developing relevant policies and practices
Vital statistics compiled from civil registration systems are the building-blocks for establishing current and sustainable demographic and health statistics databases that helps the measurement and monitoring of development results, including Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The majority of African countries do not put in place a system for generating population dynamics information.  These countries do not have a conventional system to properly generate up to date statistical data on a continuous and permanent basis on the size, fertility, mortality and growth of their population down to the lowest administrative levels.

Since most African countries do not have a conventional and adequate system of birth and death registration, they do not maintain flow of health statistics on infant, child and maternal mortality rates and causes of death, which could have served as inputs to measure, monitor and evaluate progresses made on the implementation of many of the MDGs in a sustainable manner; the Continent as a whole is in such vicious circle. 

Civil registration is the conventional information source in generating individual information that guides the implementation of health services and interventions at individual, household and community levels as per the African context.

The majority of African countries do not have accurate record of how many children die each day in their countries. This implies that no meaningful efforts have been made to find out the identity and number as well as uncover the reasons behind the deaths of the newborns in these countries.

The majority of African countries do not have accurate record on the number and identity of underweight newborns who are losing their lives at birth or in the few days or months after birth; the same holds true for Africa as a continent.

There is no accurate record of the number and identity of children born with defects/disabilities in the majority of African countries.  There is also no record of how many of these children stay alive and how many of them die eventually, or the causes of the defects/disabilities.

The majority of African countries do not have accurate record of the number and identity of mothers dying each day in childbirth and related causes; the same holds true for Africa as a continent.

In the majority of African countries, no meaningful effort has been made to compile the causes of deaths of citizens. Though the health care accorded to people is based on information procured from the cause of death of people, no significant effort was exerted to properly document funerals nor has there been systematic administration of graveyards to monitor funeral undertakings.

Africa comprised the highest number of un-registered children and hence children without official birth certificates.

According to the United Nations these children have not gone into any formal government record nor do they have a legal document permanently identifying them. They are unlikely to have a proper legal document in their lifetime identifying their names and those of their parents as well as their nationality.

 Numerous children in many of African countries are being adopted by nationals and expatriates alike. Nevertheless, as these children do not have a proper birth certificate to identify them it creates difficulty to follow-up their whereabouts.

In the majority of countries there are no records on the number of girls/children who are married off early and how many of them suffer ill-health and become victims of social crisis and lose their freedom due to this problem.

The majority of countries in Africa due to the absence of official birth certificates use traditional mechanisms in confirming school admittance age that compromise the right to education.

DEVELOPMENT IS A BOTTOM-UP EXERCISE.  THE BUILDLING BLOCKS ARE HUMAN BEINGS.  THERE CAN BE NO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT WITHOUT RELIABLE INFORMATION ON THE IDENTITIES, CIVIL STATUS AND WELFARE OF OUR PEOPLE.