challenges and opportunities of monitoring and implementing the 2030 Agenda, including fulfilling the promise to leave no one behind. In addition, the High-level Group for Partnership, Coordination and Capacity-Building for Statistics for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2017) prepared the Cape Town global action plan for sustainable development data, launched during the Forum. The action plan contains explicit calls to identify and remove barriers to the use of new data sources. This includes registries, and administrative data and other data from new and innovative sources, and coordinate efforts to incorporate them into mainstream statistical programmes and to support developing countries in implementing civil registration and vital statistics programmes that will facilitate the collection, collation and dissemination of disaggregated data. Global Financing Facility in support of Every Woman, Every Child. The Global Financing Facility in support of Every Woman Every Child is a financing platform of the Secretary-General’s new Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health (2016-2030). Launched in 2014, this multi-stakeholder partnership brings together stakeholders in reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health and nutrition to accelerate efforts to end preventable maternal, newborn, child and adolescent deaths by 2030 and improve the health and well-being of women and children. The Facility provides its target countries with an opportunity to find countries to mobilize resources for civil registration and vital statistics through the inclusion of civil registration and vital statistics improvement in the investment cases submitted to the Fund, recognizing that, with poorly functioning civil registration and vital statistics systems, it is impossible to monitor the outcome of the interventions effectively on the national level. Civil registration and vital statistics also plays a key role in providing vital legal documentation of births and marriages for improved monitoring of the age of child, which can strengthen national action to end child marriage. The Global Financing Facility will finance civil registration and vital statistics in two ways. First, by ensuring that it is included in country investment cases, the Facility will help to finance a large-scale expansion of civil registration and vital statistics, supporting countries to measure improvements in “real time” in order to count and account for the lives of all women, adolescents and children. In addition, the Facility will support country efforts to strengthen civil registration and vital statistics systems by establishing a global centre of excellence for civil registration and vital statistics, providing support by building a knowledge base, facilitating information exchanges and networks, and synthesizing and disseminating good practices. It will also provide support by contributing to global tools and standards and strengthening the capacity of civil registration and vital statistics implementers and advocates (e.g., by making links between those seeking support to build capacity in civil registration and vital statistics and those able to provide this kind of capacitybuilding). Identifying external environmental factors that could negatively affect the Africa Programme is necessary to determine the nature and types of adjustments that may be required in the objectives, strategies and activities in the five-year work plan. Some of the factors in the external environment that could be threats or factors that slow down the implementation of measures to improve civil registration and vital statistics at the country and continental levels include political instability in countries; weak coordination and collaboration among country, continental and international stakeholders; a lack of institutional commitment, participation and delivery at all levels; and the competition of various initiatives for limited resources. At the country level, the following factors could slow down the civil 11