The impact of this lack of a coordination and coherence across systems is seen perhaps most strikingly in the context of electoral registration, theoretically restricted to nationals. Most people do not have a document that is proof of nationality (even in the francophone countries where a certificate of nationality would provide such proof), so it would not be possible to hold elections if such proof were required. Thus, the required proof of identity to be registered to vote varies greatly across the region, and sometimes the systems may be effectively circular: it may be easier to obtain an electoral card than an identity card; but an electoral card may then be sufficient to serve as the basis of an application for an identity card (for example in Guinea). This lack of a systematic approach can operate both to include people on the voters’ roll who should not be there; but also to exclude those who should. According to a survey by the Carter Center, some African countries “have extremely opaque and confusing laws or occasionally no accessible laws or regulations at all governing the voter identification process, allowing great discretion among election administrators and the potential for confusion for all involved”.110 In Côte d’Ivoire, for example, during election registration: “Local government offices were overwhelmed with the demand, were often distantly located, photocopiers were unavailable in rural areas, birth certificates were difficult to trace on the basis of existing identity cards, and applicants faced additional costs if they had to submit a judicial request to receive a birth certificate.”111 People with entitlement to Ivorian nationality were thus denied the right to vote. 3.3. Inaccessibility of naturalisation procedures It is indicative of the difficulty of naturalisation that there are almost no published statistics about the numbers naturalised in most African countries. In the course of research for this study, it was established that fewer than one hundred people had been naturalised in the course of 2013 in each of Senegal, Niger and Guinea112; in Senegal as of 2007, a total of only 12,000 people had been naturalised since independence in 1960.113 In Niger and Guinea, the actual number naturalised was not known by the Ministry of Justice, since naturalisation is ultimately by presidential decree on the discretion of the president – and there was no system of feedback on individual dossiers. In Niger, if the application is not considered within one year of its submission it lapses and the applicant has to start again. In Ghana, no non-Ghanaian was granted Ghanaian citizenship by naturalisation between 1993 and 2006;114 as of 2014, UNHCR had no information that any refugee or former refugee in Ghana had been able to naturalise.115 In Côte d’Ivoire exactly 32,819 people acquired nationality by naturalisation during the whole period from 1962 to 2012; a trivial number in light of the millions of people who remain categorised in the census as “foreigners” although they have lived in Côte d’Ivoire for decades or generations.116 110 Tova Wang, Voter Identification Requirements and Public International Law: An Examination of Africa and Latin America, The Carter Center, 2013. 111 General Conclusions on the Côte d’Ivoire Identification and Voter Registration Process, The Carter Center, 6 May 2009, p. 2. 112 Interviews with ministry of justice officials, Dakar, Niamey, and Conakry, June 2014. 113 “Accès à la nationalité sénégalaise : les mêmes textes pour tous les demandeurs,” APA News, 13 August 2007. 114 Emmanuel K. Akyeampong “Race, Identity and Citizenship in Black Africa: The case of the Lebanese in Ghana”, Africa, Vol.76., No.3, 2006, pp.297-323. 115 Information from UNHCR Accra, July 2014. 116 These naturalisations were delivered by the signature of 7,121 decrees published in the official journal (the number of decrees is less than the number of beneficiaries because the figure of 32,819 includes minor children who are automatically included in the naturalisation of a parent and are listed in the decree). Information from 38