XV. Monitoring, reporting and evaluation The monitoring of the civil registration and vital statistics system will be an integral component of the continuous activities of the Africa Programme secretariat. The secretariat will compile an annual monitoring report on the implementation of the civil registration and vital statistics strategic plan at the continental and national levels. It will submit the report to the annual meetings of the joint meeting of the Committee of Directors General of National Statistics Offices and the Africa Statistical Commission, the committee of registrar generals (once established) and the African Symposium on Statistical Development, and the biennial Conference of African Ministers responsible for Civil Registration. The Africa Programme secretariat has developed a monitoring form with accompanying guidelines and has circulated it among the countries. Its purpose is to collect the data necessary to measure the progress achieved by each country on various aspects of improvement in its civil registration and vital statistics systems and to monitor the progress in improvement in civil registration and vital statistics at the continental level for tracking progress in the implementation of the strategic plan. It is also used for undertaking an annual review of the progress made in civil registration and vital statistics in the countries, given that it exhaustively covers all aspects of the systems in a systematic manner. Annex II presents the monitoring framework for the Africa Programme strategic plan, outlining the strategic objectives, indicators, targets and baseline data as of 2016. In addition, annex III outlines a tracking tool for the implementation of activities identified in the present document. While the monitoring of a system is an ongoing activity, evaluation does not follow a similar approach. The results from conducting a rigorous evaluation of the system at the end of the implementation phase of the first half of the Africa civil registration and vital statistics decade would serve as an input to the preparation of the work plan for the period 2022-2026. The evaluation is also expected to assess any signals on emerging issues and determine whether they are threats to the system that need immediate action and turn them into opportunities for the betterment of the programme. XVI. Conclusion Since 2010, the secretariat has registered many achievements, but to achieve solutions that last will require more action. Ensuring that the Africa Programme is well resourced and the secretariat strengthened will help to achieve these goals. The structures of civil registration laws and the business process for the registration of vital events in African countries require a major overhaul. The secretariat and stakeholders have to gear up their efforts to meet these demands in a harmonized, coordinated and systematic way. By 2021, according to this strategic plan, the expectation is that all countries will have in place a comprehensive law aligned with international standards and that, by that time, every African country would have at least 70 per cent birth and 35 per cent death registration coverage, along with a significant improvement in the recording of cause of death. In addition, all African countries will record significant advances in marriage and divorce registrations (see annex VII for details). During the same period, the vital statistics system in at least 40 countries would become efficient and innovative, underpinned by statistical methodologies benefitting from civil registration information. 32