UNICEF - United Nations Children's Fund

Published purpose

This project aims to register and issue birth certificates to 3.5 million girls and boys under the age of five (including 90% of newborns and 70% of previously unregistered children) in ten 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, which was 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. Some project activities include: (1) training local government registration agents, specifically health workers and Ward Executive Officers; (2) entering into a public-private partnership with key mobile service providers operating in the ten 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.