I. Introduction and background Civil registration3 and vital statistics4 systems underpin the status and pace of Africa’s political, economic and social development and that of the world as a whole. In the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the importance of individual and aggregate records and data on birth and death in the realization of basic human and civil rights and in the monitoring of development are implicitly recognized and underlined. Anchored to the vision of eradicating extreme poverty from the face of the earth by 2030, the 2030 Agenda has, as the first of its five transformative shifts, to “leave no one behind”, an emphasis on the need to ensure that no person is excluded or denied universal human rights and access to basic economic opportunities. Inclusiveness as a prerequisite to the continent’s growth and development is likewise echoed in Agenda 2063. A fundamental challenge to the realization of these Agendas remains the fact that civil registration systems are largely dysfunctional in most parts of the developing world. Consequently, a majority of the population remain legally “invisible” in the eyes of the State, denying them the right to be known and planned for by their Governments, access to fundamental opportunities and services and the ability to claim their rights or to participate in governance processes. Records of birth and death derived from civil registration systems not only provide the basis for securing fundamental human and civil rights, but also provide a permanent, continuous and universal source of population data. The United Nations recognizes the civil registration system as the most reliable source of vital statistics, needed by Governments for accurate and timely planning, resource allocation and for overall good governance. Notwithstanding this unanimous recognition, civil registration systems are largely incomplete in most African countries. According to the World Bank (2014) global estimates, the amount of children under five years of age not registered at birth is 230 million. Of these unregistered children, 37 per cent are in sub-Saharan Africa. The estimate of deaths that go unregistered worldwide is 53 per cent, and progress in improving death registration in developing countries is slow (World Health Organization, 2016). Africa has an expected higher rate than that of the global estimate because very few African countries have functioning death registration systems, and in many of the African countries, deaths occur outside health facilities, with a high likelihood that the occurrence of the event goes unregistered. The recording of causes of death and the derivation of statistics thereof is in a much more unacceptable state, with only two or three countries reporting such statistics to the World Health Organization (WHO) on a yearly basis. Recently, the continent faced a challenge in managing the outbreak of Ebola owing to the lack of an information system on cause of death. In a bid to reverse the poor state of functioning civil registration and vital statistics systems in the region, African countries had previously defined a regional road map that should 3 The United Nations defines civil registration as the continuous, permanent, compulsory and universal recording of the occurrence and characteristics of vital events pertaining to the population as provided through decrees or regulation in accordance with the legal requirements of each country. Civil registration has a dual purpose: administrative and legal on the one hand and statistical, demographic and epidemiological on the other. 4 The use of vital statistics is to obtain precise and up-to-date measurements of demographic changes and for the study and analysis of trends. Vital statistics are also primary data sources for the health sector in the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of various health interventions and epidemiological studies. The measurement and monitoring of many of the indicators require vital statistics data on a continuous and timely basis.