Project profile — Scaling-up Birth Registration Using Innovative Technology

This project aims to register and issue birth certificates to 7 million girls and boys under the age of 5 (including 90% of newborns and 70% of previously unregistered children) in 26?regions of mainland Tanzania. Accurate birth registration allows the Government of Tanzania to effectively and efficiently plan for health, education, and child protection services and ensure that children have access to these services. The project supports the scaling up of an innovative birth registration system developed by Tanzania’s birth registration agency in partnership with Tigo (a mobile service provider). The system uses innovative technology that quickly uploads records of all birth registrations to a centralized system through text messages sent from mobile phones. This allows for real-time monitoring of birth registrations at national, regional and local levels and greatly simplifies the registration process. Project activities include: (1) training local government registration agents on the gender-responsive simplified birth registration system, specifically health workers and Ward Executive Officers; (2) entering into a public-private partnership with key mobile service providers operating in the 26 regions; (3) conducting public awareness campaigns to support the implementation of the new birth registration system in each region; (4) assisting the Government of Tanzania to finalize the new Birth and Death Registration law; (5) coordinating an inter-ministerial committee on civil registration and vital statistics; and (6) training a core team of national facilitators to scale up the new birth registration system across mainland Tanzania.

The expected outcomes of this project include: (1) strengthened and established government management and oversight systems for birth registration; (2) increased certification of births for children under 5 in mainland Tanzania; (3) increased the government’s capacity to manage and monitor national gender-responsive simplified birth registration system; (4) improved availability of quality gender-responsive simplified birth registration services; and (5) increased use of gender-responsive simplified birth registration services by women and men, especially vulnerable mothers.

Results achieved at the end of the project (December 2023) include: (1) successfully implemented the Simplified Birth Registration System in all 26 regions on the Tanzanian mainland; (2) registered over 9.4 million births (50.9% boys and 49.1% girls); (3) increased access to birth registration, from 97 in 2013 to 11,376 registration centers across all regions; (4) trained 21,831 registration officers to deliver a gender responsive simplified birth registration system; (5) developed a harmonized and integrated digital national registration system, which integrates the registration of all vital events and includes mobile application capabilities to allow public self-notification of events; and (6) supported streamlined birth registration efforts for children born to refugee parents, and young and adolescent mothers in Kagera and Kigoma regions.