Civil registration as the foundation for digital public infrastructure and digital legal identity systems in Africa
10 August 2025
On 10 August 2025, we will welcome the eighth consecutive commemoration of Africa Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Day, on which occasion governments, civil society organizations and other stakeholders on the continent will commit to eliminating the scandal of invisibility by achieving the universal registration of all vital events, such as births, deaths (including the cause of death), marriages and divorces.
Africa Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Day was proclaimed at the thirty-second ordinary session of the Executive Council of the African Union, held in 2018, with a view to raising awareness of the importance of well-functioning civil registration and vital statistics systems. The day will also be an occasion to voice support for national and regional commitments to strengthening civil registration and vital statistics systems and to increasing stakeholder coordination to maximize the mobilization of available resources.
This year’s events will be held under the theme “Civil registration as the foundation for digital public infrastructure and digital legal identity systems in Africa”. The choice of this theme reflects the strategic importance of civil registration as a central pillar in building inclusive, trusted and secure digital systems that ensure all individuals are visible and that they are able to access all the services to which they are entitled.
As we celebrate Africa Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Day, we should reflect on the commitment embodied in the Africa Programme for Accelerated Improvement of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics, which was established following a resolution by African ministers responsible for civil registration at their first conference, held in Addis Ababa in August 2010. In this fifteenth year of the Programme, we note that the vision for the Programme to make everyone visible in Africa remains relevant today. We reaffirm our mission to make the accelerated improvement of civil registration and vital statistics the cornerstone of legal identity acquisition for all from birth, with a view to realizing universal basic human and civil rights, improving service delivery through interoperable systems, and creating a solid basis for informed evidence-based planning and decision-making.
Despite notable improvement in some countries and regions over the past decade, civil registration and vital statistics systems in Africa remain mostly suboptimal, with many countries failing to register most vital events. Contributing factors include poor institutional coordination, underfunding, outdated legal frameworks and political instability. In addition, the lack of interoperability among identification, health and social protection systems limits the effectiveness of civil registration and vital statistics and undermines efforts to improve service delivery and governance. Faced with these realities, at a recent expert group meeting of Registrars General and Directors General held in Equatorial Guinea, participants strongly emphasized the urgency of accelerating progress in strengthening civil registration and vital statistics systems to meet the commitments made to achieve in Africa the Goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that pertain to legal identity. They also affirmed that civil registration and vital statistics systems must be treated as core public infrastructure that is essential for inclusive governance and rights-based development. To address such systemic barriers, they endorsed interoperability, decentralization and digitalization as foundational strategies for transforming civil registration and vital statistics systems.
Along similar lines, the 2025 theme underscores the pivotal role of civil registration in enabling the realization of an agenda for digital public infrastructure through the provision of foundational identity data. To be interoperable across sectors, digital legal identity systems require accurate, timely and comprehensive civil registration data. Civil registration and vital statistics constitute the backbone of legal identity and are essential to achieve target 16.9 of the Sustainable Development Goals 1 . The theme provides an opportunity to advocate the integration of civil registration into national digital transformation agendas and emphasizes the role of civil registration in enabling the development of digital legal identity systems.
On the occasion of Africa Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Day, governments and partners across Africa are encouraged to:
- Reaffirm the strategic role of civil registration and vital statistics in national digital development agendas
- Advance investment in digital civil registration and vital statistics systems that are inclusive, resilient and interoperable
- Establish strong legal frameworks and data protection policies to safeguard personal information
- Promote integration between civil registration and vital statistics, identification, health and social protection systems
- Allocate sustainable and long-term national budgetary resources to support the transformation of civil registration and vital statistics in alignment with the accelerator strategies of digitalization, integration and decentralization
- Maintain their efforts to support major decision-making platforms, such as the Conference of African Ministers Responsible for Civil Registration, as essential mechanisms for advancing the civil registration and vital statistics agenda
As African countries work toward the realization of the vision for the Africa Programme for Accelerated Improvement of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics to make everyone visible in Africa, this year’s Africa Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Day serves as a call to action to leverage civil registration and vital statistics systems for inclusive digital transformation. Governments, development partners and stakeholders must unite in their efforts to ensure that no one is left out of Africa’s digital future.