through the Statistics Division, thus setting international standards in this area.7 In line with the international standards, the civil registration and vital statistics secretariat developed tools, frameworks and guidelines for comprehensive assessment and strategic planning, a resource used by many countries; (d) Country assessments. There has been a sustained political commitment at the country level, with Governments taking leadership and ownership in strengthening their relevant civil registration and vital statistics systems. As of May 2017, as many as 30 countries had completed assessments of their systems (23 countries completed comprehensive assessments and 7 countries completed rapid assessments). Twenty-five of them had developed strategic improvement plans and a few countries initiated the implementation of their plans. A further 13 countries had at least initiated the process of conducting a comprehensive assessment. The desk research, among others, looked at the weaknesses of the civil registration and vital statistics improvement process from the continental programme framework and from the country perspective. The research uncovered several weaknesses in the continental Africa Programme governance arrangement, specifically funding and human capital challenges, since the inception of the programme in 2010. The major weaknesses were the following: (a) The Africa Programme secretariat is understaffed and underresourced. The current state of the secretariat, if maintained, cannot meet the much-needed support required by countries and is at risk of slowing down the momentum gained in the past few years. The situation is so dire that there is even a risk of losing the achievements made in the past six years; (b) Several of the civil registration and vital statistics guidelines and manuals planned under the medium-term plan were not delivered, and thus countries did not receive the support that they needed in terms of public goods to improve their systems; (c) The secretariat has recently designed an online platform for monitoring the performance of civil registration and vital statistics systems in the countries. The regional programme, however, lacks a monitoring and evaluation framework for its own activities. At the country level, the major weakness is the lack of comprehensive civil registration laws aligned with international standards, with no review or revision of the laws in many countries for many decades. The other major problem is the lack of accessibility to civil registration services and lack of simplified and efficient processes for delivering services to the people, thereby contributing to low registration in almost all countries. Only few countries have arrangements put in place to register births and deaths as they occur in health facilities. Even in these few countries, the recording of causes of death is inadequate or not done properly. The use of new technology is still not widely adopted in many of the countries, while the few that do are facing challenges in identifying and applying appropriate technologies for their systems. Other weaknesses observed, besides the inadequate legislative environment and weak civil registration and vital statistics business processes, are the lack of effective coordination and collaboration among key stakeholders; inadequate organizational structure for the civil registration and vital statistics system; inadequate government budget; and the lack of a monitoring and evaluation framework. In addition, there is a lack of comprehensive, 7 International standards, recommendations and tools are available at the Statistics Division website. Available at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/CRVS/default.htm. 7