Executive summary In the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the importance of individual records and data on birth, death and causes of death in the realization of basic human and civil rights and in the monitoring of development are implicitly recognized and underlined. Anchored by the vision of eradicating extreme poverty from the face of the earth by 2030, it 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 nor 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. Individual identity records and documents generated from the civil registration system help to fulfil the first fundamental human right that every individual is entitled to upon birth, that is, the right to a name and an identity, from which other human and civil rights are found. The recognition of the existence of persons by their Governments and the ability of individuals to transact with each other and with the State through legal identity documents are fundamental attributes of good governance, realized only by States in which complete civil registration systems exist. Records of birth and death derived from civil registration systems also provide a permanent, continuous, universal and reliable source of vital statistics for accurate and timely planning, resource allocation and for overall good governance. Notwithstanding this unanimous recognition, civil registration systems are largely incomplete in most countries on the African continent. Consequently, millions of African people have come into this world and left without leaving a trace on official records. According to the World Bank and World Health Organization (2014), the global estimate of 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 World Health Organization (2015) estimated that 53 per cent of deaths go unregistered worldwide and that progress in improving death registration in developing countries has been slow. Africa has an expected higher rate than that of the global estimate because very few African countries have functioning death registration systems. In addition, in many African countries, deaths occur outside health facilities, with a high likelihood that the occurrence of the event goes unregistered. The recording of cause 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 on a yearly basis. Recently, the continent faced challenges in managing the outbreak of Ebola owing to the lack of an information system that deals with cause of death. The current state significantly jeopardizes many of the continent’s efforts to halt poverty and advance sustainable development. In a bid to reverse the poor state of functioning civil registration and vital statistics systems in the region, the first session of the Conference of African Ministers responsible for Civil Registration established the Africa Programme on Accelerated Improvement of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Systems (hereinafter referred to as the Africa Programme) in August 2010. The policy directives of the Conference of African Ministers1 guide the Africa 1 The Conference of African Ministers, institutionalized as a standing forum of the African Union Commission, convenes every two years. iii