Africa targets 100 percent registration and documentation of its citizens

THE Chairman of the Bureau of African Registrars General, Mr Henry Machiri has reaffirmed the continent’s collective commitment to achieving 100 percent civil registration and documentation for all its citizens.

Zimbabwe took over chairmanship during the week-long Annual Expert Group Meeting for African Registrars General and the Board of the Africa Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) Shared Asset, held in Victoria Falls.

The new Chair and Registrar General of Zimbabwe, Mr Machiri, expressed pride in the successful hosting of the conference and highlighted its core purpose of fostering collaboration.

“I am so happy that this conference has been a success, and we are proud that as a country we have managed to host, and all our delegates are happy with the hosting which we did,” he said.

He explained that the annual meetings serve as a critical platform for peer-to-peer learning.

“The purpose of this conference is we meet annually as Registrar Generals and share information on the issue of vital civil registration. Challenges which we face we share, and any other issues concerning the vital registration… we share with other countries, and learn from each other to see how best we can make the registration systems in Africa effective,” Mr. Machiri said.

Mr Machiri outlined the ambitious continental objective and the necessity of a unified approach.

“Our objective as a continent is to come to 100 percent registration. We want to make sure that each and every person is registered, but to do this we need advice, we need to consult others in the region, even in the northern part of the continent, to make sure that we cover each and every aspect,” he said.

A key theme emerging from the conference was the need for integration and decentralisation of registration systems.

Zimbabwe’s own progress in this area was noted as a continental benchmark .

Mr Machiri said this is a vital step forward.

“The issue is that of integration of systems. This is quite important instead of having silo systems. The integration and the decentralisation is something which as a country we are already a step ahead, but we are happy that this is something which as a continent people have adopted to make sure that we decentralise instead of having people travel far to come to offices for registration, but let offices go to the people so that it becomes easy for people to get their documentation,” he said.

The conference also offered a valuable opportunity for knowledge exchange, particularly on digitization.

Mrs Josephine Mukesha, Director General of the National Identification Agency (NIDA) in Rwanda, praised Zimbabwe’s hospitality and shared her country’s experience with full-service digitalization.

“It was really an honour to be here to attend this meeting. I would like to first thank so much the Government of Zimbabwe, the Office of the Registrar General, for the very warm welcome,” she said.

“Coming back to this meeting, we learnt a lot. We have learnt mostly on the digitalisation of the CRVS system. So, for information in Rwanda, we have digitised completely our service system. We have all the nine vital events that are done end-to-end online, and also even the issuance is done online via our citizen portal called Irembo,” Mrs Mukesha explained .

She also noted the importance of the Africa Shared Asset’s self-assessment tool for countries at different stages of development and emphasized the need for cross-border interoperability.

“The other one is also to see how we need to think about the interoperability beyond the borders, because ultimately, to enable people to move freely, but they also need to move with all their records and their events, so that the counterparty countries can be able to authenticate them as easy as possible,” she said.

Mrs Mukesha said the next step is to harmonise work to ensure that no one is left behind.