Programme and a regional civil registration and vital statistics system secretariat manages it. The secretariat operates from the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and a partnership of the lead pan-African organizations (the African Union Commission and the African Development Bank, agencies of the United Nations system and non-governmental organizations) that form the Africa civil registration and vital statistics Core Group.2 The Africa Programme has now completed its fifth year of operation and has made significant progress in harnessing political commitment for improvement in the systems at the highest level of Governments through the ministerial platform. The Programme has also made significant progress in promoting country ownership and leadership; promoting systematic and coordinated approaches in the reform of civil registration and vital statistics systems at the regional and country levels; building the capacity of civil registration and vital statistics system functionaries; and facilitating knowledge and the sharing of experiences between countries. It has significantly contributed to the global momentum for an improvement in civil registration and vital statistics systems, an agenda that was earlier referred to as “the most critical development failure” and a “donor orphan”, given the past years of failure. Approximately half the countries in Africa have now completed comprehensive assessments of their civil registration and vital statistics systems and a number of them are in the process of developing strategic and costed action plans. There are increasing demands from countries for technical assistance and guidance in the assessment and planning processes, and improvement in the management and operation of various aspects of their systems. The decision of the Heads of States and Government in June 2016 to declare 2017–2026 as the “Decade for repositioning of CRVS [civil registration and vital statistics] in Africa’s continental, regional and national development agenda” underpins the need for a comprehensive work plan for the decade. In addition, it supports the need to restrategize the frameworks and methodologies for the coming phase of implementation. The priority for the Africa Programme now shifts from the preparatory phase of intensive advocacy and communication and planning conducted since its inception in 2010 to rigorous capacity development efforts specific to country demands and needs, and drive the implementation of civil registration and vital statistics reform. The present document provides the Africa Programme framework for implementation in the first half of the civil registration and vital statistics decade by defining the priorities for the region, setting the time frames for various actions and establishing the human and financial resource requirements. The strategic plan thus considers the following questions: Where are we now with respect to the ongoing civil registration and vital statistics improvement initiative? Where do we want to be by 2021? How are we going to get there? In the absence of fully functioning civil registration and vital statistics systems, millions of Africans have remained unrecorded and therefore unrecognized by the State. Most African countries have not benefitted from a continuous supply of reliable data on vital events, including cause-of-death information, to support informed policymaking, implementation and monitoring 2 The Core Group is composed of the pan-African organizations (African Union Commission, African Development Bank and the Economic Commission for Africa), the secretariat of the African Symposium on Statistical Development, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the United Nations Population Fund, the World Health Organization, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Plan International, the INDEPTH Network, Partnership in Statistics for Development in the 21st Century and Bloomberg Philanthropies Data for Health Initiative. iv