A recent study conducted in late 2019 by Planète Enfants & Développement and its partners in Burkina Faso highlights weaknesses in the registration of births, deaths, and marriages in some areas of the country. What are the first steps being considered to remedy this?
Within the framework of the PEPS project (Civil Status and Social Promotion Project) conducted by Planète Enfants & Développement and its partners, we conducted a study from November 24 to December 6, 2019, in 39 villages and towns in the Boucle du Mouhoun and the Center West. The objective was to make a The purpose of the study was to assess the current state of civil registry systems, evaluate the equipment and skills of administrative agents and identify solutions.
In a few figures :
- 78.6% of centers surveyed have a procedure manual
- On the other hand, 50% report having low-skilled staff
- 83% do not have hardware and software to record the acts.
In a country where more than 20% of children under 5 years of age are still not registered at birthThe first recommendations of the study are to train agents (especially in computer science, archiving methods, reporting procedures), ofEquip the centers with computer equipment andcomputerize records.
According to the study, these initial measures would respond to an emergency on the ground while waiting for the deployment in the country of the civil registry, an application allowing midwives working in the most remote areas to register each birth from a smartphone. Eventually, the digitally recorded civil status data could be more easily transferred to the said application.
The PEPS project is part of a genuine desire on the part of the Burkinabe government and civil society to modernize the national birth registration system through the use of new technologies. It is implemented in consortium by Planète Enfants & Développement and its partners Terre des hommes-Lausanne, ABBEF, PROMACO and the Association of Municipalities of Burkina Faso (AMBF); and funded by the European Union.
